Department Seminar – Aaron Buchwald

When

February 28, 2014    
1:10 pm - 2:00 pm

Where

3043 ECpE Building Addition
Coover Hall, Ames, Iowa, 50011

Event Type

Aaaron Buchwald
Aaron Buchwald

Title: Challenges of Calibrated Time-Interleaved High-Speed ADCs

Speaker: Aaron Buchwald, Fellow, Entropic Communications

Faculty Host: Randall L. Geiger, Doluca Professor

Abstract: The dream of moving the ADC of a communication receiver all the way to the antenna is fast becoming a reality. Recent ADCs that take advantage of time-interleaving and rely heavily on calibration enable new receiver architectures where the entire spectrum is digitized while all channelization and demodulation is done in the digital domain. Such systems that are “RF-to-Digital” have many advantages. However, the design of the requisite ADC remains a challenge to achieve wide-bandwidth and high dynamic-range at very low power. This talk introduces key concepts of calibrated time-interleaved ADCs at a tutorial level. Examples of specific solutions are presented. Advanced concepts are also introduced. Finally, students wishing to pursue this area as a research topic will be exposed to several unsolved issues and hopefully will be inspired to extend the state-of-the-art with new and creative solutions.

Speaker Bio: Dr. Aaron Buchwald has 31 years experience in the field of analog integrated circuit design.  He is currently a Fellow at Entropic Communications after their recent acquisition of Mobius Semiconductor, where he was CEO and founder.  Prior to founding Mobius Semiconductor, Dr. Buchwald worked at Broadcom, joining as one of the first members of the analog group with the charter to help build a world-class analog team emphasizing design in a mixed-signal environment.

Dr. Buchwald’s work on embedded CMOS Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)  enabled the production of single-chip cable set-top boxes and cable modems with integrated analog front ends and DSP  circuitry.  His work was awarded the best paper prize in 1997 at ISSCC. Later, Dr. Buchwald was responsible for development of high-speed serial transceivers (XAUI, CX4 and Fiber Channel) at Broadcom. The initial XAUI transceivers were some of the first to employ adaptive receive equalization.

Dr. Buchwald was formerly an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). In his early career, Dr. Buchwald spent two years as an analog IC designer at Siemens in Munich Germany. Prior to that, he was with Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo, CA.

Dr. Aaron Buchwald was born in Ames, Iowa and received a BSEE from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is co-author of the book Integrated Fiber-Optic Receivers. He has taught professional short-courses on data converters and serial transceivers.

 

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