Circuit Concepts for Energy-Efficient Optical and Wireless Systems

Friedel Gerfers (TU Berlin, D)

Abstract

The steadily increasing number of agile Internet users with simultaneously increasing data volumes demand innovation in the field of energy-efficient wireless and optical communication systems. New communication technologies such as wideband sampling or sampled-beamforming concepts are essential in addition to bandwidth and energy-efficiency enhancements. To further improve the energy-efficiency, mixed-signal calibration concepts are applied, enabling the accurate correction of nonlinearities and mismatch effects. In this talk, we first analyse the performance requirements of different building blocks of VCSEL-based and wireless broadband transceivers and propose different mixed-signal circuit innovations. In addition, various digital and mixed-signal calibration schemes are proposed in turn relaxing the stringent design specifications therewith lowing the overall power consumption of the building blocks. Measurement results confirm the effectiveness of the suggested techniques. 

Curriculum Vitae

Friedel Gerfers received the Dr.-Ing. degree from the University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, in 2005. He gained his first industrial R&D experience at Philips Semiconductor, Starnberg, Germany. From 2006 to 2014 he was with Intel Research in Santa Clara, Aquantia Inc., Integrated Device Technology (IDT), Inphi and Apple in Cupertino, all in California, USA. In 2015, he was appointed as a full professor at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany where he heads the "Mixed Signal Circuit Design (MSC)" chair. In recognition of this achievements in this field, he was awarded in 2019 the Einstein-Professorship for Mixed Signal Circuit Design from the Einstein Foundation Berlin. In 2018, Dr. Gerfers co-founded IC4X GmbH, Berlin, which specializes in the development of high-performance analog and mixed-signal circuits and systems. Currently he is scientific advisory board member of research institutes IHP, FBH and the FMD, Germany as well as Siemens Digital Industries, Fremont, USA. Dr. Gerfers is currently technical program committee member of the ISSCC, ESSCIRC, EUMW and OFC. He was guest editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC).