Research

Power Management Integrated Circuit Design

Power management integrated circuits (PMIC) are critical for improving energy efficiency, reducing thermal dissipation, and extending battery life in mobile and internet-of-things (IoT) applications. Some of our past work includes:  

Currently, we are interested in

Students: Nipun Kaushik.

Hardware Security of Integrated Circuits

Mathematically secure cryptographic algorithms may leak side-channel information when implemented on a chip. How to detect and defend side-channel attacks in a hardware and energy-efficient manner has attracted our interest.

We also want to secure Neural Networks against side-channel attacks and adversarial machine learning. 

Students: Rowshon, Nipun, Christian, Aaron.

Analog VLSI Circuits Radiation Hardened by Design

Low Orbit Earth (LEO) and deep space present a very harsh environment for microelectronics to operate due to the "short-term" Single-Event Effects (SEE) and "long-term" Total Ionizing Dosage (TID).  Our work seeks to Radiation Harden Analog / Mixed-Signal circuit building blocks By Design (RHBD) instead of relying on specialized processes.

Student: Andrew Ash.  (Image credit: NASA)

Signal Electronics Lab Photo

600 square feet of dedicated space for IC testing. ESD flooring installed in 2019, which prevents unintentionally "zapping" ICs. (Nov, 2019)

Electronics Design Automation (EDA)

Our laboratory is equipped with industry-standard IC design software and EDA suits, including:

Process Design Kit (PDK)

We have signed non-disclosure agreements (NDA) with TSMC and UMC to use their selective technologies for research prototyping.

Laboratory Space and Equipment

Room: ATRC 235 (600 square feet)

Purpose: Dedicated space for IC test and measurement. ESD protected.

Chips Gallery

Dual-mode LDO

UMC 0.13 um CMOS (2020)

Switched-cap PSCA detector

TSMC 65 nm CMOS (2021)

Revised PSCA detector

TSMC 65 nm CMOS (2022)

TZLS LDO regulators

ON Semi: 0.6um CMOS (2009)

IEEE ICECS 2010.

Buck converter

ON Semi: 0.6um CMOS (2010)

GoMACTech 2011.

Battery Charger

Maxim: 0.18um BiCMOS (2015)

IEEE ISCAS 2017.

Sponsors

A list of our current and past sponsors: