CPCC Summer 2004 Research Presentation Day for Conexant, Mindspeed, and Skyworks Takes Place

The day began with presentations from the three companies. Charlie Raasch, Technology Planning Division Director at Conexant, and CPCC Board Member, outlined the business interests of Conexant as “broadband communications for enterprise networks and the digital home.” In particular, Conexant is in voiceband, digital subscriber line (DSL), cable, and power line modems, broadcast video encoders and decoders, digital set-top box components and systems solutions, as well as in wireless local area networks. In addition, Conexant provides symmetric and asymmetric DSL Central Office solutions. Conexant was launched as an independent entity in January 1999 after Rockwell International Corp. spun off its Rockwell Semiconductor System business to shareowners. In 2002, Conexant has created four independent companies; Skyworks Solutions, Jazz Semiconductor, Mindspeed Technologies, and the continuing Conexant.

Speaking on behalf of Minspeed Technologies, Dr. Mojy Chian, Core Technologies Vice President and CPCC Board Member, described the business interests of Mindspeed in general terms as semiconductor products for Internet network infrastructure. These consist of network processors, Voice over IP (VoIP) products, analog modem aggregation, SONET/SDH/PDH PHY multiplexer and transport products, as well as high performance analog circuits for applications such as DSL line drivers, switching blocks, and crossbar switches, in addition to fiber-optic components and backplane/system interconnect products. Therefore, Mindspeed business encompasses enterprise, access, metropolitan, and wide area networks, a major part of enterprise or service provider networking business. Mindspeed’s customers are system integrators and network equipment vendors who are leaders in these business segments such as Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Lucent Technologies, Alcatel, Siemens, Fujitsu, etc.

Skyworks Cellular Systems Program Director and CPCC Board Member John Bell specified Skyworks as the industry's leading wireless semiconductor company focused on radio frequency (RF) and complete semiconductor system solutions for mobile communications applications. Skyworks was created when Conexant’s wireless business and Alpha Industries, Inc., a Massachusetts-based manufacturer of RF integrated circuit-based solutions merged in 2002. Customers of Skyworks are leading wireless handset and infrastructure manufacturers such as Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung, etc. Products manufactured by Skyworks for these customers range from front-end modules to switches and power amplifiers in an integrated form. John Bell predicted that Skyworks products are in about half of all cellular phones in the world.

The first speaker from the CPCC was Professor Payam Heydari. Professor Heydari received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2001. Since then, he has been an assistant professor at UCI and a member of the CPCC. His research interests are in the design and simulation of analog, radio frequency and mixed-signal integrated circuits, and very large-scale integration (VLSI) interconnect analysis and simulation. In his presentation, Dr. Heydari discussed a number of his recent projects which have to do with designing and analyzing ultra high-speed circuits operating in frequencies up to about 10 GHz and 10-40 Gb/s in complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS). Examples of these circuits are new low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers, mixers, and timing recovery circuits. These circuits have applications in, for example, the new ultra-wideband (UWB) frequency band. One of the circuits developed by Professor Heydari’s group is a mixer that can work with both of the impulse radio or Orthogonal Division Frequency Multiplexing (OFDM) proposals for this band. Another circuit Dr. Heydari discussed in his presentation was a distributed amplifier which employs, contrary to conventional methods, variable gain from section to section.

Next speaker from the CPCC was Professor Michael Green. Professor Green has been with UCI since he received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1991. Professor Green’s current research interests are mainly in analog integrated circuit design for high-speed broadband and optical communication. Specifically, Professor Green is interested in data transmission over both copper and fiber at transmission speeds of 10 to 40 Gb/s. An example of such an equalizer designed by Professor Green’s group is an adaptive equalizer manufactured by Jazz Semiconductor using a SiGe process at 350 nm. This is a sophisticated adaptive equalizer employing the Decision Feedback Equalizer (DFE) architecture, which presents a major challenge to implement at these operating rates. In addition, the required needs for equalization at 10 Gb/s or more for copper are more complicated in fibers by nonlinear effects such as dispersion. Dr. Green presented simulation results for fiber, against multimode fiber dispersion, resulting in an open eye.

Professor Franco De Flaviis has been at UCI since 1997, after receiving his Ph.D. from UCLA that year. His research interests are in the integration of novel materials and technologies in electromagnetic circuits and antenna systems. Examples of Professor De Flaviis’ work are Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS)-based Printed Circuit Board (PCB) reconfigurable antennas, small size antennas for wireless networking, passive components on a package (such as embedded inductors), and beam-switched antennas based on MEMS technology. A recent project of his group is the use of “meander” antennas which are implemented on PCBs by implementing conductors back and forth to minimize the required space. These antennas can be designed using the mathematical theory of topology, and their implementation has the potential of resulting in surprisingly easy and small integration of the antenna in a standalone of array combination, together with other RF modules in the same board.

Kevin Tsai received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986.  His research interests are in computer and communication applications, specifically flow control, routing, and traffic management. In his presentation, Professor Tsai described an approach where the Quality-of-Service (QoS) problem in networks is treated as a control theory problem. His approach uses the MaxMin Theory of Controls to derive centralized algorithm optimality conditions, and then designing protocols for a signaling protocol and a switching algorithm. The MaxMin Allocation Theory in its continuous and discrete versions results in a number of desirable features, such as unicast and multicast, a time scalable protocol, optimality conditions, a convergence theory, a bottleneck ordering theory, and a discrete single-path algorithm for all-optical networks. In his approach, the MaxMin Control is used for optimal resource allocation while network queue control is used for optimal time allocation.

CPCC Deputy Director Professor Hamid Jafarkhani received his Ph.D. in 1997. He has been at UCI since 2002. Prior to UCI, Professor Jafarkhani worked at AT&T Labs-Research and Broadcom. While at AT&T Labs-Research, Professor Jafarkhani was part of the team that invented space-time coding, which has very quickly become part of a number of communication standards. In addition, Professor Jafarkhani is an expert in source coding and joint source and channel coding, subject areas he worked on as a Ph.D. student and early in his career. Furthermore, recently he has been working on data the transmission of multimedia information over wireless networks and the Internet. He is interested in developing new coding schemes and network protocols that improve end-to-end recovery and enhance the quality of service for video.

Professor Syed Jafar received his Ph.D. during the fall of 2003 and joined UCI and CPCC in January 2004. His main research areas cover capacity channels of wireless channels, Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) techniques with imperfect channel knowledge, mobility in ad-hoc networks, and adaptive multirate Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA). In his presentation, Dr. Jafar discussed a technique he has worked on during his Ph.D. thesis, known as the technique of Dirty Paper Coding, which has been recently shown to be optimum for broadcast downlink channels. Dr. Jafar was part of the team that proved this optimality condition, solving an open problem in the Information Theory literature.

The final speaker on behalf of the CPCC was Professor Ender Ayanoglu who received his Ph.D. in 1986 and has had former affiliations at Bell Labs (first as part of AT&T, then Lucent Technologies) and Cisco Systems. Professor Ayanoglu has been at UCI since 2002 and he currently serves as the CPCC Director. Professor Ayanoglu discussed his former and current research. Among his former work is the co-invention of the 56K modem concept, Task Leader role of the Long Distance Architecture Task of the $50M DARPA Multiwavelength Optical Networking (MONET) project of AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Bellcore, and others, and world’s first fixed broadband wireless networking products and specifications. Professor Ayanoglu was the Chairman of the IEEE-ISTO Broadband Wireless Internet Forum, an industry consortium of 50+ companies building this fixed broadband wireless access system and its next generation specifications. His current work involves wireless local area networks. At the end of his presentation he discussed his group’s collaborative work ongoing with Conexant Systems regarding the physical layer and the multi-access layer for IEEE 802.11 networks.

With these presentations this first Research Day for Conexant, Mindspeed, and Skyworks ended. Professor Ayanoglu stated that this first event was for the CPCC team and the technical teams of the three companies to get to know each other and commence a discussion of joint research interests and directions. He stated that the participating faculty were the CPCC members as well as CPCC affiliates whom the three companies already have had research collaborations with. He mentioned the next step as being a Call for Proposals for a number of  2004-2005 CPCC Graduate Fellowships. He concluded by saying that the CPCC and the three companies are in agreement for a directed research format where the chosen CPCC Fellows and their Advisor Faculty will work closely with the three companies during the academic year.

In follow-up discussions, representatives from all three companies stated that the format and the content of the Day were along what they would like to see moving forward. A general agreement of holding similar meetings twice every year was agreed. Professor Ayanoglu expressed his expectation that with a program in place, the next meeting will be bigger and better.