RF carrier modulation based high-speed data communication over various medium including transmission line, ultra-short distance air coupling, and dielectric wave guides is presented. A base band equivalent impulse response method will analytically prove the equalization effect (equivalent to pre-emphasis) over low-pass channel, and frequency notch based bandwidth limitation effect over dielectric wave guide with non-linear propagation constant.
An inexpensive FR4 PCB antennas with flip-chip assembly at 120GHz and 150GHz are designed to couple through ultra-short distance air channel (<2mm). The proposed coupling architecture achieved less than 20dB loss at millimeter wave frequency over 40GHz bandwidth. Next, OOK modulating 120GHz transceivers in 65nm CMOS process are designed to transfer 14Gb/s of data rate successfully.
Inexpensive dielectric medium such as polystyrene and polyethylene exhibit low-loss characteristic (<0.001 of loss tangent) at millimeter wavelength, and accordingly, various structure of dielectric wave guide has been tested to study the feasibility of communication distance of 10m ~ 50m. Just name a few, circular hollow plastic, powder filled plastic, and rectangular ribbon. Turns out, the biggest issues at present time are shielding and non-linear propagation constant that ultimately limits the bandwidth. To solve the shielding issue, a copper coated flexible circular wave guide is implemented and successfully tested over 0.5m at 6Gb/s data rate using 60GHz carrier. One step further, a densely packed PCB embedded plastic ribbon cables, which is shielded by copper trace readily available in standard PCB process, are implemented using 150GHz carrier, targeting (>1Tb/s) short distance (~10~20inch) back plane applications. To enable higher than 20Gb/s per channel, a compact and wide band tuned transformer coupled receiver is implemented in 28nm CMOS process.
Biography:
Yanghyo Kim is currently working towards his Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include high-speed data communication, wave guides, millimeter-wave transceiver, synthesizers, high-speed analog-to-digital converters, and implantable bio integrated circuit design. He was a 1st place winner of the 2013 Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition. Since 2013, he has been an intern engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, developing CMOS based instrument for space science.
