Research shines light on circuit design program

The integrated circuit design program at UT Dallas is turning heads: Three of the program’s papers were recently ranked among the top 50 downloads from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

The University’s integrated circuit design program has expanded in recent years to more than a dozen professors and several dozen graduate students in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

“This says the work we’re doing is highly relevant and top-quality,” said Dr. Kenneth K. O, a professor of electrical engineering and director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE) at UT Dallas. “And it’s rare that one institution has this many papers in one research area at once.”

The first paper described a novel approach for mitigating radio-frequency (RF) interference that can occur within the ever-smaller transceiver chips of cellphones. It was co-authored by graduate student Imran Bhasir, Dr. Bhaskar Banerjee, Dr. Poras Balsara and others.

“The main reason I think our paper has proved so popular is that the whole area of digital RF that we worked on with the DRP group at Texas Instruments over the last decade is now rapidly becoming popular all over the world,” Balsara said.

Dr. Song Guo and Dr. Hoi Lee co-authored a paper regarding circuits that handle power management, demonstrating a means to advance performance by several orders of magnitude in these particular circuits, which are used in most electronic devices.

“High-caliber graduate students are key to our work,” Lee said. “I am very lucky to work with my outstanding former student Song Guo, who graduated with his PhD in electrical engineering last year and now works at TI.”

The third paper, co-authored by Dr. O and titled “Technique for Integration of a Wireless Switch in a 2.4 GHz Single Chip Radio,” helps pave the way for M&M-size wireless sensor nodes.

The bottom line is clear, according to Dr. John H.L. Hansen, head of electrical engineering: “Our circuits research is top-tier and competing with the best in the world.”

Provided by University of Texas at Dallas