Defence of doctoral thesis in the field of Micro- and Nanoelectronic Circuit Design, M.Sc.(Tech.) Ali Saleem

M.Sc.(Tech.) Ali Saleem will defend the thesis "Integrated RF Transmitter Front-End for Frequency Reconfigurable Antenna Clusters" on 4 February 2022 at 2 p.m. in Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, in lecture hall AS1, Maarintie 8, Espoo, and online in Zoom.

Opponent: Prof. Timo Rahkonen, University of Oulu, Finland
Custos: Prof. Jussi Ryynänen, Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering

The public defense will be organized via remote technology. Follow defence: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/64714951365
Zoom Quick Guide: https://www.aalto.fi/en/services/zoom-quick-guide

Thesis available for public display at: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/doc_public/eonly/riiputus/
Doctoral theses in the School of Electrical Engineering: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/53

Press release:

The ubiquity of radio frequency (RF) gadgets in our daily lives such as smart-phones, laptops, and other wireless devices contributing to internet-of-things (IoT) are anticipated to cross 25 billion by year 2030. As a consequence, there is an ever-rising need to improve the RF transceiver electronics in conjunction with interfacing antenna structures in order to realize a robust and versatile wireless RF gadget performance across variety of frequency bands.

As the number of antennas in a small handheld gadget are continuously increasing to support multiple frequency bands and radio standards, its becoming an arduous design challenge for both antenna and RF transceiver designers. However, the interface between RF front-end electronics and antenna is culminated with bulky on-chip/off-chip matching components, and its getting even harder in fullfiling the user requirements of wideband spectrum coverage and reduced form-factor with current state-of-the-art tuning techniques.

This work focuses on design and implementation of an integrated RF transmitter front-end suitable for wideband antenna tunability in sub-6 GHz spectrum. The proposed integrated circuit utilizes ultra-deep sub-micron semiconductor technology that enables complex on-chip functionalities in supporting our wideband tuning objective. In particular, this circuit provides optimal RF signal generation, needed to verify for the first time a novel antenna cluster tuning concept in the integrated circuit domain. Multiple demonstrations consisting of RF transmitter front-end that drives and tunes antenna clusters have confirmed that the RF transmitter front-end completely eradicates the typically needed tuning components, and solely tunes the antenna clusters across wideband with on-chip weighted signal generation. This technique results in component free interface between the RF transmitter front-end and interfacing antenna clusters, a probable solution to rectify the complexity of future RF devices.

Furthermore, the transmitter IC along with provided antenna cluster prototypes can be adopted in typical wireless transmitter applications for achieving wideband tunable transmission in 5G New Radio FR-1 bands. This work can act as a stepping stone towards a more compact RF gadget which can provide us our day-to-day means of communication encompassing famous wireless technologies to date such as GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3.5 GHz and frequency bands up to 5 GHz.

Contact information of doctoral candidate: