Wideband Digital-to-Analog Converters for mmWave Transmitter

Over the past ten years, the data rate of cellular communication networks has increased by 100x. The next-generation software-defined-radio based wireless transmission in mmWave bands demands multi-GHz bandwidth digital-to-analog conversion with medium to high resolution (e.g., 14-16 bit) and sampling rates beyond 10GS/s. The rate of bandwidth increase and the required improvements in energy efficiency have exceeded the benefits of CMOS process scaling alone. There are compelling needs for novel architecture and circuit design techniques. In this talk, I will review recent development and present emerging parallel-path DAC architectures for extending the bandwidth with higher power and area efficiency than conventional interleaving designs. I will discuss the practical challenges along with several key analog design techniques. I will conclude with some future directions. At the end of the talk, I will briefly introduce some other research activities in my group, such as low power bioelectronics, neural interfacing and modulation circuits, and machine-learning accelerators.

Speaker(s): Dr. Xilin Liu

Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/309574

Biography: Dr. Xilin Liu (Senior Member, IEEE) is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. He obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the University of Toronto in 2021, he held industrial positions at Qualcomm Inc., where he conducted R&D of high-performance mixed-signal circuits for cellular communication. He led and contributed to the IPs that have been integrated into products in high-volume production, including the industry’s first 5G chipset. He was a visiting scholar at Princeton University in 2014. He has co-authored two books along with over 30 peer-reviewed articles. He was the first author of the papers that have received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2017 ISCAS, the Best Paper Award at the 2015 BioCAS, the Best Track Award at the 2014 ISCAS, and the student research preview (SRP) award at 2014 ISSCC. He also received the SSCS predoctoral achievement award at the 2016 ISSCC.