Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

By 2020, mobile communication traffic is expected to increase 1,000 times from current levels with over 50 billion devices equipped with digital sensing, communication and processing capabilities to enable the ""Internet of Things."" In this digital society, there will be a need for new wireless access technologies (referred to as 5G) to support the deployment of hyper-connected information communication technology (ICT) solutions. 5G will enable access to information anywhere, at any time, by anyone, from anything. 5G technology outcomes will transcend traditional applications such as mobile wireless communication, to underpin a vast array of applications that will impact Canadians socially and economically. 5G will require radically different paradigms for developing low cost and power efficient wireless transceivers; more particularly the underlying transmitters and power amplifiers (PA) for mobile devices, access and backhaul infrastructure, and network topologies. Distinctive challenges face the development of 5G technology including wide bandwidth, high operating frequencies and heterogeneous and ad-hoc networks. However, these challenges offer excellent opportunities for academia and industry to investigate new approaches to creating energy efficient 5G transceivers and PA architectures. Solving these challenges will translate into a share of the 5G market and the resultant economic returns but will require accurate modeling of the nonlinear mechanisms and dynamic properties of semiconductor devices at millimeter wave (mm-wave) frequencies. This project will establish a mm-wave semiconductor device characterization and modeling framework for the holistic design of flexible 5G radio frequency (RF) devices; creating efficient ""bridges"" between device and circuit levels, and between circuit and system levels. It aims to develop physics-based compact and behavioral models capable of accurately predicting semiconductor device behavior at mm-waves. These models will form an integrated electronic design automation backbone to realize RF devices beyond what is possible with contemporary technology.