Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science Electrical Engineering Annual Report 2011-2012 Table of Contents Chair’s Introduction 3 Ph.D. Student Research Highlights 4 Faculty Highlights 8 Faculty Awards 10 Recognitions/Awards 15 Student Awards 18 Alumni Board 19 Members of National Academies 20 Research Centers 22 Department Statistics 24 Circuits and Embedded Systems Faculty 26 Physical and Wave Electronics Faculty 29 Signals and Systems Faculty 32 Books by Faculty 35 Post-Graduation Academic Placement 36 Department Administration 37 Industry Affiliates 38 2011-2012 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING ELECTRICAL 2 Intro Another Year of Advancement Chair M. C. Frank Chang I am pleased to share with you the activities of UCLA ■ Ali Motafakker-Fard for his high-speed optical Electrical Engineering for academic year 2011-2012. imaging techniques which can slow down, amplify and Research conducted by our faculty, staff and students capture extremely fast events. have resulted in many exciting advances. ■ Thomas Courtade for his work on source coding Three Assistant Professors, Danijela Cabric, Lara which have applications to the data-centric world we Dolecek and Benjamin Williams, were each awarded live in today. with the National Science Foundation’s CAREER award, David Murphy’s paper on the development of a uni- the federal agency’s most prestigious award in support versal radio receiver architecture to cover the entire of junior faculty. The CAREER program also provides communications bands from 80 MHz to 2.7 GHz with- funding for innovative research to each of the out using external SAW-filters, a collaboration between awardees. Associate Professor Aydogan Ozcan, himself UCLA and Broadcom, was awarded the ISSCC 2012 Dis- an NSF CAREER recipient in 2010, was honored with tinguished Technical Paper Award. the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Our alumnus Dr. Kinam Kim (UCLA Ph.D. 1994) was Engineers (PECASE) and Assistant Professor Robert elected as a Foreign Associate of the National Acad- Candler received the Army Research Office Young In- emy of Engineering. And eight graduates recently vestigator Award. accepted academic appointments, both here in the US Additional honors were awarded to our faculty for (UCLA, UC Davis, Florida International University) and their scientific and teaching contributions — Profes- abroad (National Tsing Hua University —Taiwan, sor Yahya Rahmat-Samii was awarded the UCLA Dis- Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology — tinguished Teaching Award for his dedication and Korea, Delft University — The Netherlands, effectiveness as an educator and Professor Henry and Tsinghua University — China). Samueli was honored with the Marconi Prize for his Our undergraduate and graduate pioneering development in broadband radio-on-chips. programs have continued to garner Professor C. Kumar Patel was inducted into the Na- much interest from prospective stu- tional Inventors Hall of Fame for first realizing the car- dents. From AY10-11 to AY11-12, the bon dioxide laser, which has been extensively used in number of applicants has increased the advancement of medical, industrial and military by 8% (undergraduate program) and fields almost 50 years after its invention. 36% (graduate program). The compet- On the research front, Professors Asad Abidi and itiveness of admission is clearly evi- Frank Chang have realized a universal radio receiver denced by comparing average GPA of in commercial CMOS that can cover the entire com- incoming freshmen: the average GPA of munication bands below 3GHz. Professors Oscar incoming freshman in AY10-11 was 3.83 Stafsudd and Warren Grundfest are developing real- compared to that of our incoming fresh- time optical cancer detection techniques and Profes- man class with a GPA of 3.924. sors Tatsuo Itoh and Benjamin Williams are We extend our deepest gratitude ENGINEERING ELECTRICAL investigating Terahertz laser antennas that will lead to to our friends, alumni, cus- advanced functionality for THz devices. tomers and collaborators in Our students and graduates have also made signifi- industry, government and cant research developments. Distinguished Ph.D. Dis- academia — with your sertation Awards were granted to: continued support, we will ■ Adrian Tang for his mm-wave and THz imaging continue to strive for both techniques that can be used to detect concealed academic and educa- 2011-2012 weapons up to 500 GHz in commercial CMOS. tional excellence. 3 Student Highlights CMOS Millimeter-Wave and THz Imaging Techniques Adrian Tang Advisor: Professor M. C. Frank Chang Millimiter-Wave and THz imaging is an exciting re- band effects of mm-wave and THz imaging including search area creating new possibilities of detecting con- ghosting, specular material responses, low reflection cealed weapons, contraband materials and even trace diversity and incidence angle losses. The demonstrated gases using the unique physical properties of mm-wave radar system sets the record for radar accuracy in sil- and THz radiation. Here at UCLA, we have developed icon technology. several new techniques to construct THz detectors based on super-regenerative receivers at frequen- cies up to 495 GHz and noise equivalent powers as low as 1fW/Hz05. An antenna-less regener- ative reception approach was demonstrated at 245 GHz which uses regenerative passives to act as a radiator, greatly improving imaging re- ceiver noise performance. Secondly, an Inter- modulated regenerative reception technique was demonstrated at 350 and 495 GHz as a means to image in multiple bands, and operate above fmax, the device unity gain frequency. Quench-synchronized focal plane arrays were developed which allow super-regenerative receivers to operate in close proximity without suffer- ing from quench coupling super-regenerative interfer- ence. Finally, a full 144 GHz 3D imaging radar based on successive-approximation ranging is presented which achieves sub-cm resolution in an all CMOS implemen- Professor Henry Samueli examines Adrian Tang tation. 3D imaging is critical to overcome the narrow- research project. Receiver Transmitter USART DAC 1300um 3X PA RX Lens TX Lens PLL 1400um TX Scanning Image 53 GHz 200 GHz 350 GHz 2011-2012 A CMOS 350 GHz color THz imaging receiver A CMOS 144 GHz 3D mm-wave imaging radar developed at UCLA. system developed at UCLA. ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING ELECTRICAL 4 Student Highlights Photonic Time-Stretch for High-Speed Analog-to-Digital Converter and Imaging Ali Modafakker-Fard Advisor: Professor Bahram Jalali Real-time instrumentation is an underlying plat- tified for the first time. Furthermore, several archi- form for a broad range of industrial, scientific, and tectures and implementations employing real-time medical applications. The demand for such instru- burst sampling (RBS) for high-speed performance ments capable of detection and diagnostics in a very monitoring of phase- and/or amplitude-modulated short time scale is rapidly growing. While alternative optical signals are introduced, making the time- approaches based on strobe light effect provide valu- stretch ADC viable for advanced optical networks. able information about an event, capture of transient In addition, a new method for capture of ultrafast and rare-occurring events will require true real-time optical signal using photonic time-stretch technique instruments with fine time resolution and long without the need for E/O and O/E conversions is in- record length. Such events are often indicative of ei- troduced to increase its versatility for performance ther measurement error or that the population has a heavy-tailed distri- bution, which they carry vital infor- mation with a major impact. In the context of optics, these instruments are needed to capture and quantify fast transient errors in optical com- munication systems, biological sys- tems, etc. The photonic time-stretch is a novel technique that can slow down, amplify, and capture fast events. It provides a versatile tool for analog- to-digital conversion, imaging, and spectroscopy. In the context of ana- log-to-digital converters (ADC), the photonic time-stretch has proven its capability for achieving wideband signal digitization and characteri- zation with high dynamic range and resolution. In monitoring in intelligent and re-configurable optical order to meet stringent requirements for many ap- networks. This novel approach also suggests a path plications, the photonic time-stretch should provide to real-time recording of complex (phase very high dynamic range over a broad analog band- and amplitude) optical signals. width. Fundamentally-new distortion suppression Finally, a spin-off application for techniques, such as broadband linearization the photonic time-stretch tech- technique, which offers an improvement of nique, enabling high-speed high- more than 2.5 effective-number-of-bits contrast imaging of unstained (ENOB) over previous linearization tech- transparent objects (e.g., biologi- ENGINEERING ELECTRICAL niques is achieved. The time-bandwidth cal cells) was developed. This im- product (i.e., spectral efficiency) of the time- aging modality, called Nomarski stretch ADC is significantly improved via a po- serial time-encoded amplified mi- larization-multiplexing technique. The impact of croscopy (N-STEAM), holds great optical nonlinearity on fidelity of electrical signal promise for high-throughput imag- captured by time-stretch ADC and upper limits on the ing and screening of biological resolution imposed by optical nonlinearity are iden- cells and tissues. 2011-2012