Iman makes cell phone signals clearer
2023-11-02
Reconfigurable receiver front-ends for advanced telecommunication technologies
Iman Ghotbi defends his thesis November 24th, 09:15 in E:1406.
Zoom link:
https://lu-se.zoom.us/j/64532196838
Link to thesis in LUCRIS:
Describe your research in a popular science way
Have you ever been in a stadium, struggling to communicate amid deafening noise? Imagine having the power to establish a clear channel, immune to interference, with someone right beside you. While my thesis doesn't promise superpowers, it does focus on enhancing your cellphone's capabilities.
Just as crowded venues disrupt our conversations, cellphones face challenges delivering multimedia experiences in congested environments. Imagine the near future, where you use your cellphone for 3D augmented reality or share real-time events with thousands of others simultaneously. This data load is staggering.
How can cellphones maintain seamless communication amidst interference? We can't shout louder, just as your vocal cords can't overpower the crowd’s noise. Instead, semiconductor technology allows cellphones to reject unwanted signals. Our research designs selective filters to quell interferences, ensuring clear, high-speed, and energy-efficient communication. These filters adapt to changing interference levels, making them crucial for modern wideband technologies like 6G.
What made you want to pursue a PhD?
From the very beginning of my undergraduate studies, I found analog and RF electronic circuit design to be an endlessly fascinating field. The complexity of working with semiconductor technology, electromagnetics, and circuit theory all in one package sparked my curiosity and ignited my passion for innovation. What truly excited me about this area of study was the satisfaction of seeing a concept I had designed and engineered, overcome uncertainties, and perform precisely as intended in the real world.
Pursuing a PhD was a natural progression of this passion. It provided me with a golden opportunity to gain a profound understanding of the subject, honing my engineering skills, and mastering the art of communicating science. Furthermore, it provided me with the opportunity to embrace the roles of both a researcher and an educator, a path that I was eager to embark on.
What is the most fascinating or interesting with your thesis subject?
As the title of the thesis indicates, the most intriguing aspect of my thesis is the development of reconfigurable CMOS solutions. These solutions can flexibly adjust to a wide range of gains, frequencies, bandwidths, and interference rejection. This adaptability is crucial in enabling 5G/6G receivers to operate efficiently in diverse conditions. This is particularly important when implementing broadband software defined radios and spectrum-aware cognitive radios, which are universal solutions for multi-standard multi-band receivers.
Do you believe some results from your research will be applied in practice eventually? And if so, how / how?
I firmly believe that the circuit solutions we developed in this PhD project have the potential to enhance the power efficiency, tolerance, and noise performance of CMOS wideband receiver front-ends. This contribution becomes even more significant when we consider the challenges of realizing low-power and highly reconfigurable receivers that are essential for the centimetric frequency band of the 6G spectrum.
What are your plans?
I plan to continue my academic journey as a researcher and teacher.