Abstract
The mm-wave spectrum offers promising potentials for various applications such as communication and radar. The higher frequency and available bandwidth can significantly increase the data rate and resolution, while reducing the size of the system. However, lower available-gain of the transistors and higher noise contribution from components at these frequencies can increase power consumption and reduce sensitivity. In addition, the existing multi Gb/s communication systems and radars are inherently complicated and require power hungry components such as modem (e.g., ADC/DAC) and low efficiency power amplifiers.
In this talk we present system and circuit level techniques to achieve 17 Gb/s data rate with record power consumption at 160 GHz. This is enabled by 4FSK modulation scheme and a novel frequency sharing receiver architecture. Next, we present a low power radar sensor system with record displacement accuracy/sensitivity of tens of nm at mm-wave frequencies. This is achieved by coherent demodulation and signal generation through common-referenced sub-sampling PLLs. Finally, we demonstrate a new phase shifting method based on combining standing and traveling waves and show how it can achieve significantly higher reconfigurability, phase shifting range and bandwidth. Using this method we present a reconfigurable phased array that can produce high resolution images at 450 GHz.
The proposed structures can be used in battery powered and portable systems for applications such as virtual reality, UAV- and Vehicle-to-Things communication, IoT, human vital signs detection, biomedical and agriculture sensing, material analysis, structural health monitoring, and security screening.
Bio
Omeed Momeni (S’04-M’12-SM’18) received the B.Sc. degree from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, the M.S. degree from University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, and the Ph.D. degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, all in Electrical Engineering, in 2002, 2006, and 2011, respectively.
He joined the faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of California, Davis in 2011 and is currently a Professor. He was a visiting professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at University of California, Irvine from 2011 to 2012. From 2004 to 2006, he was with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) as a RFIC designer. His research interests include mm-wave and terahertz integrated circuits and systems.
Prof. Momeni serves as an Associate Editor for The IEEE Microwave and Wireless Technology Letters (MWTL) since 2021, and a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member of International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) since 2024 and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium since 2018. He has also served as a Distinguished Lecturer for Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) in 2020-22, an Associate Editor of Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (TMTT) in 2018-20, a Steering Committee Member (2020 and 2025) and Technical Program Review Committee Member (2017-20) of the International Microwave Symposium (IMS), an organizing committee member of IEEE International Workshop on Design Automation for Analog and Mixed-Signal Circuits in 2013, and the chair of the IEEE Ithaca GOLD section in 2008-11. Prof. Momeni is the recipient of UC Davis Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award in 2022, National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2015, the Professor of the Year 2014 by IEEE at UC Davis, the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award from the Cornell ECE Department in 2011, the Outstanding Graduate Award from Association of Professors and Scholars of Iranian Heritage (APSIH) in 2011, the Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop on Microwave Passive Circuits and Filters in 2010, the Cornell University Jacob’s fellowship in 2007 and the NASA-JPL fellowship in 2003.