VINNOVA Industrial Excellence Center - System Design on Silicon

2008-01-01 -> 2017-12-31

Research Groups

In this section we describe the main participating research groups in the center together with comments regarding the centers international standing, collaborations and critical size.

1. The Analog/RF-group

The analog/RF group is headed by Professor Henrik Sjöland and includes one Assistant Professor, Markus Törmänen, seven PhD students, and one Adjunct Professor, Dr. Sven Mattisson from Ericsson Research in Lund. The group has a long tradition in design of RF integrated circuits in CMOS technology with many fabricated circuits measured every year, often with state-of-the-art performance. Key areas of interest are circuits for millimeter wave applications, ultra-low power wireless devices, and new generation mobile terminals. The group has excellent contacts with researchers and experts at the companies of the center, and Henrik Sjöland holds 20% positions at Ericsson Research. Many patents have been created, either transferred from the university to the companies, or generated by the work of Henrik Sjöland at Ericsson Research.

2. The Mixed-Signal group

The mixed‐signal group working chiefly in A/D conversion and frequency synthesis, is headed by associate professor Pietro Andreani and consists of one postdoc fellow, four PhD students, and a number of researchers and experts from Ericsson Research: Sven Mattisson, Lars Sundström, Mattias Palm and Martin Anderson. The excellent connection with the industry is further enhanced by the fact that P. Andreani was Chair Professor in Physical Electronics at the Technical University of Denmark in 2001‐2007, which resulted in very tight relations with the thriving Danish IC design companies (TI, Oticon, Pulse, etc). P. Andreani has been a TPC member of the ISSCC in 2007-2012, and is a TPC member of ESSCIRC since 2007 (Chair of the Frequency Generation track since 2012, TPC Chair for 2014) and of RFIC since 2014, which has helped establishing a world‐wide net of relations with top researchers in both academia and industry.

3. The Digital ASIC group

The digital ASIC group is headed by Associate Professors Joachim Rodrigues and Liang Liu, and 9 PhD students, of which 3 are to defend their PhDs in the coming months. During the period Erik Larsson has been recruited as an Associate Professor with the main focus on verification and test, thus incorporating a competence profile not previously present in the group. Contact exists with researchers from the participating companies including and we especially want to emphasize the established contacts with ST Microelectronics. The digital ASIC group had worked in the area of baseband processing for several years and being early in investigating techniques such as OFDM, multiple antenna systems and flexible radio architectures. Furthermore, the group has a strong research focus low-energy circuits and design methodologies as well as novel models of computation. The group has excellent industrial contacts and a large international contact network, e.g. EPFL, IMEC, UCLA and BWRC.

4. The Nano-group

VINNOVA Industrial Excellence Center SoS, 2014-01-15

The nano-electronics group in Lund is headed by Professor Lars-Erik Wernersson and consists of one Ass. Prof. Erik Lind and 11 Ph.D.-students. The group is divided by the Departments of Electrical and Information Technologies and the Physics Department and works with emerging technologies with the aim to tailor materials and device properties to realize target applications. In the areas of circuit design we address mm-wave pulse generators and detectors as well as implementations of low-power III-V MOS devices and circuits. By nature the research is more exploratory and in this center, the group constitutes a link towards the emerging technology community.

5. Center Research Facilities

The world class laboratory facilities have been built up through many years through the support from various sources and include measurement equipment. The laboratory is well equipped for measurements on high frequency components and devices, radio building blocks, and complete transceivers, up to frequencies of more than 60GHz. The laboratory features instruments such as network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, a phase noise measurement system, real time oscilloscopes, a sampling oscilloscope, an automatic impedance tuner, a large RF shielded room for sensitive noise measurements, and a probe station for measurements on chip and wafers. The latest major investment was in 60GHz equipment and it was enabled by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation. The laboratory also incorporates measurement equipment for digital and mixed signal circuits. The research environment at Lund University also includes access to the nano- meter laboratory and the world leading facilities for fabrication of for example nano-wires. The laboratory also has an extensive set of FPGA evaluation boards with supporting software tools. In 2012 a new laboratory facility was inaugurated into which distributed smaller facilities was incorporated. This included considerable investments by the department, including the construction of a new Faraday room. The investment has proven a great success both in concentrating investments in measurement facilities and creating a common meeting place within the department. These facilities are also available for local companies and other research departments at the university, a scheme we will try to developed during the coming years. In addition, the Faculty awarded Professor Sjöland a grant of 1.3MSEK to acquire measurement equipment for mm-wave circuits, an investment supported by SoS through co-financing. The existing world class laboratory facilities has been built up through many years and is well equipped for measurements on high frequency components and devices, radio building blocks, and complete transceivers, up to frequencies of more than 60GHz. The laboratory features instruments such as network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, signal generators, a phase noise measurement system, real time oscilloscopes, a sampling oscilloscope, an automatic impedance tuner, a large RF shielded room for sensitive noise measurements, and a probe station for measurements on chip and wafers. The laboratory also incorporates measurement equipment for digital circuits. The research environment at Lund University also includes access to the nano-meter laboratory and the world leading facilities for fabrication of for example nano-wires. The laboratory also has an extensive set of FPGA evaluation boards with supporting software tools, with several donations from the Xilinx University Program. The research facilities also include a state of the art design environment for integrated circuit design in modern technologies. This is strongly supported by the SoS partners Cadence, ST Microelectronics and Infineon. These companies not only provide CAD-environment and silicon fabrication but are providing training, design reviews and extended support. Through this environment a large number of circuits has been designed, verified and tested in modern technologies, previously 65nm CMOS but recently also 28nm FD-SOI CMOS. In addition center researchers have the possibility to use measurement and test facilities at the sites of participating companies.

6. Center Collaborations

VINNOVA Industrial Excellence Center SoS, 2014-01-15

SoS is in a very vibrant environment with access to one of northern Europe’s largest universities and well as world leading companies within the area of wireless communication and integrated circuit design; Ericsson, Infineon, Sony Mobile, ST Microelectronics and Cadence. In addition to the participating companies within SoS we have a fruitful relationship with both local and international companies; e.g. AXIS, ARM, Oticon, Xilinx, and National Instruments. Within the university we have access and close cooperation with among others the research groups of radio systems, information theory, signal processing, electromagnetic theory and solid-state physics. We are also cooperating with the sister center EASE, especially with respect to embedded system design, a cooperation that has been strengthened through the center activities. SoS has with industrial partners Ericsson and Infineon been part of the EU FP7 projects Multibase and Dragon and is in January 2014 launching the new EU FP7 project MAMMOET on Massive MIMO. Thereby, the cooperation with IMEC, Belgium, has been strengthened and IAB member Jan Rabaey is also advisor to MAMMOET. Furthermore, we have excellent contacts with UC Berkeley, UCLA, Victoria University, EPFL, and the Universities of Pavia and Padua, just to name a few. Those cooperations have among other things been shown through exchange visits by seniors and PhD students. We believe that those cooperation show that Lund University is seen as a respected research partner within the field and that the research is regarded to be at the highest international level.

7. The Center and the Research Environment

Being an industrial research center is regarded as an important factor in getting access to the vast industrial knowledge encompassed within the organizations of the SoS partners. This gives us an opportunity not available to many universities in the world and also benefits the complete research environment and not only the dedicated SoS activities. The center by itself cannot be seen as having the critical size to maintain the necessary research environment that is needed to perform research in this area with its demands on facilities, infrastructure and critical mass. However, having the center with its rather long time perspective (10 years) and the industrial contacts gives a stability and an environment that to a large extent has facilitated the successful grants of additional research grants, both national and international.