Energy Efficient Integrated Circuits and Systems for Communications and Sensing: RF to Optical
Creators: name: Khoeini, Farzad
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: MicroLED-based Optical Interchip Communication
subject: High PSRR Pulsed Lidar Receiver
subject: Reflection-based Short Pulse Generator
subject: Push Pull Regulated Cascode Transimpedance Amplifier
subject: Photodetector Capacitance Measurement
subject: Electrical Engineering
subject: Engineering

description: The trend of continually increasing demand for high-performance computation in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and virtual/augmented reality requires increasing chip-to-chip communication throughput. On the other hand, high-throughput chip-to-chip links usually entail incorporating very high speed Serializers/De-Serializers (SerDes) to mux/de-mux the data onto a relatively few electrical I/O lines due to the limited number of chip package pins, and off-chip routing challenges. This not only incurs latency overhead but also a significant energy and silicon consumption overhead. It is therefore highly desirable to develop energy efficient and compact parallel interconnects for chip-to-chip communication. An optical interface has great potential to ameliorate the interchip communication bottleneck while enhancing energy efficiency and compactness. To this end, a major part of this thesis aims analysis and development of high performance energy efficient integrated circuits and systems for ultra dense optical parallel chip-to-chip communication. The experimental results of several multi Gbps optical transceiver prototypes fabricated in nanometer CMOS technologies prove the proposed optical links a promising technology for interchip communication. In addition, we theoretically compare the energy efficiency of a parallel optical link with a serial optical link. For the same data throughput, a parallel link demonstrates a significantly superior energy efficiency. Moreover, a CMOS sensor is proposed that can measure the small capacitance of on-chip photodetectors. This allows bandwidth and noise optimization for the front-end of optical receivers. In the remaining parts of the dissertation, the development of several energy efficient high performance integrated circuits for pulsed light detection and ranging (Lidar), pulsed radio frequency detection and ranging (Radar), and wireless high frequency communication systems are presented. More specifically, the design and test of an optimized analog front-end for pulsed Lidar receivers fabricated in a CMOS technology is presented that remarkably reduces energy consumption. Also, a new transimpedance amplifier topology is introduced that enhances the energy efficiency of the conventional structures, not only for optical communication but also for sensing. In addition, a novel energy efficient pulse generator is introduced that systematically can produce a pulse with high amplitude and short width in any CMOS technology and deliver it to low impedance loads. Moreover, a wireless transmitter for short range communication in the mmWave frequency band fabricated in a SiGe BiCMOS technology is demonstrated that enables energy efficient high data rate communication.