DESIGN
IDLab-Design focuses on the research and development of electronic and photonic integrated circuits for optical transceivers, covering high-speed and quantum communication, and sensing applications. The development of advanced co-designed chips from architecture to system demonstrator involves broad expertise and team work along the following lines of research:
- Analog, mmwave & mixed-signal electronic integrated circuit design in various technologies such as 28nm CMOS, 22nm FDSOI, 5nm and 3nm FinFet CMOS, SiGe BiCMOS, GaAs and InP. Extensive design expertise has been acquired on transimpedance amplifiers, modulator drivers, low-noise amplifiers, power amplifiers and advanced signal generation and signal processing circuits such as wireline digital-to-analog converters, PLLs, equalizers, multiplexers, demultiplexers, and clock-and-data recovery.
- Digital signal processing from algorithms till implementation: a research theme rapidly gaining weight in the team is DSP supporting both the wireline and quantum communication applications. The focus is on novel signal processing algorithms for e.g. high-capacity and short-reach interconnects, covering implementation in scaled-CMOS nodes with focus on high performance, low power and area requirements.
- Photonic integrated circuit (PIC) design, photonic device modelling and electronic-photonic co-design. With our research we aim to develop compact, co-packaged transceivers with low-power consumption with applications in datacom, mmwave radio-over-fiber, quantum applications and sensing. The co-design of electronic and photonics circuits enables new architectures and performance trade-offs to e.g. optimize high-speed performance, power consumption or sensitivity, or to implement new functionalities through optical signal processing. The readout and feedback control circuits to make complex PICs work are also co-developed. Custom transceiver PIC design is focused on imec’s silicon photonics platform, however, co-designs have been made for a wide range photonic technologies e.g. VCSEL, APD, InP, or LNOI.
- IC characterization and physical layer testing. Top notch test and measurement infrastructure is available in the IDLab-Design lab for the characterization of integrated circuits and co-packaged transceivers and for system-level validation of the physical layer. This also involves the digital signal processing, real-time in FPGA or off-line, to generate and demodulate particular waveforms for example for coherent transceiver demonstration, burst-mode communication, radio-over-fiber for distributed antenna systems or for quantum key distribution and quantum random number generation.
The increasing need for speed and the vast potential for integrated sensing is driving the development of optical transceivers and their technologies in many applications. IDLab-DESIGN teams-up with leading industry partners and technology providers to focus on key growing applications such as:
- Short-reach optical interconnects: particular focus on scaling capacity by pushing baudrates and use of advanced modulation formats, with spillover towards optical IO
- Long-reach optical transmission based on coherent transceivers and DSP
- Passive optical networks (PONs) considering the upstream burst-mode communication in particular and the evolution toward coherent-lite transceivers
- Radio-over-fiber using mm-wave and sigma-delta modulated signalling for front-hauling and distributed antenna systems in 5G and 6G
- Intra-satellite links: radiation hardened transceivers for both digital and RF-over-fiber links
- Quantum key distribution and quantum random number generation
- Photonic sensing for controlling complex PICs, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) and Lidar
IDLab-DESIGN is currently 40+ people strong and has 25+ years of research experience in the domains of high-speed and mixed-signal circuit and system design and has a wide range of activities, including
- fundamental, basic/strategic, and applied research with a very strong international involvement in for example 17 Horizon 2020 projects and 16 Horizon Europe projects
- contract-based and program-based research with leading industrial partners;
- scientific consultancy for both industrial and governmental partners;
- academic education and STEM outreach;
These activities resulted, a.o., in 200+ articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, 300+ articles in peer-reviewed international scientific conferences (incl. several scientific awards), several patent applications (20+ granted), 30+ PhDs, and 1 spin-off company (Bifast, part of NVidia since 2021).
More detailed information on our activities can be found on our IDLab-DESIGN team website.
