Analog VLSI Lab members publish four books

Mohammed Ismail, professor of electrical and computer engineering, together with his graduate students in the Analog VLSI Lab, have recently published four books. Waleed Khalil, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is a co-author on one of the books.

VCO-Based Quantizers Using Frequency-to-Digital and Time-to-Digital Converters (Springer, 2011) was written by Samantha Yoder, doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering; Waleed Khalil, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Mohammed Ismail. Traditional analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) face many design challenges as technology scales. A few of these challenges are (1) voltage dynamic range decreases making it difficult to accurately quantize in the voltage domain (2) architecture contains many analog components which are challenging to design in deep submicron complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) processes. Voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO)-based ADCs are gaining popularity due to the highly digital architecture and improved timing resolution in deep submicron CMOS processes. This book presents a theoretical and modeling approach to understanding the VCO based quantizer. Two digital time quantizer architectures are reviewed: one using a frequency-to-digital converter (FDC) and the other using a time-to-digital converter (TDC). The TDC architecture is new to the application of the VCO-based quantizer.

Built-in-Self-Test and Digital Self-Calibration for RF SoCs (Springer, 2012) was written by Sleiman Bou-Sleiman, recent PhD graduate, and Mohammed Ismail. It introduces design methodologies, known as Built-in-Self-Test (BiST) and Built-in-Self-Calibration (BiSC), which enhance the robustness of radio frequency (RF) and millimeter wave (mmWave) integrated circuits (ICs). These circuits are used in current and emerging communication, computing, multimedia and biomedical products and microchips. The design methodologies presented will result in enhancing the yield (percentage of working chips in a high volume run) of RF and mmWave ICs which will enable successful manufacturing of such microchips in high volume.

CMOS High Efficiency On-Chip Power Management (Springer, 2012) was w

ritten by John Hu, recent graduate with a PhD in electrical and computer engineering, and Mohammed Ismail. It deals with the subject matter of power management integrated circuit (IC) design, or integrated power electronics, as a response to the growing need for energy-efficient electronics. The authors introduce various power management IC design techniques to build future energy-efficient “green” electronics. The goal is to achieve high efficiency, which is essential to meet consumers’ growing need for longer battery lives. The focus is to study topologies amiable for full on-chip implementation (few external components) in the mainstream CMOS technology, which will reduce the physical size and the manufacturing cost of the devices.

Integrated Frequency Synthesis for Convergent Wireless Solutions (Springer, 2012) is written by Jad G. Atallah and Mohammed Ismail. It describes the design and implementation of an electronic subsystem called the frequency synthesizer, which is a very important building block for any wireless transceiver. The discussion includes several new techniques for the design of such a subsystem which include the usage modes of the wireless device, including its support for several leading-edge wireless standards. This new perspective for designing such a demanding subsystem is based on the fact that optimizing the performance of a complete system is not always achieved by optimizing the performance of its building blocks separately. This book provides “hands-on” examples of this sort of co-design of optimized subsystems, which can make the vision of an always-best-connected scenario a reality.