CMOS-Monolithic Nano-Acoustic Spectral Processors for 5G Wireless Systems

Faculty:Roozbeh Tabrizian
Project Description:TTabrizian’s group, at the University of Florida, has developed a ground-breaking silicon-based heterogeneous resonator technology to enable single-chip integration of ultra-stable spread- spectrum frequency references along with RF front-end filters and duplexers for the emerging wideband 5G mobile wireless systems in cm- and mm-wave regimes. This technology relies on a recent invention “the silicon-based Fin Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FinBAR)” that is the first acoustic resonator technology in history that can be monolithically integrated with CMOS electronics on a single chip. The CMOS-FinBAR heterogeneous building block, which is currently being developed in Tabrizian’s lab enables monolithic integration of a field programmable array of ultra-stable oscillators with high-performance front-end filters to enable multi-carrier clock generation for carrier aggregated 5G data communication as well as high rate spread spectrum clocking with significantly reduced phase noise/power consumption over the entire 3-300 GHz spectrum. The CMOS-FinBAR heterogenous block has a promising potential to radically enhance the capacity of wireless networks by expanding the accessible spectrum resources to under- utilized mm-wave spectrum. This enables realization of modern applications where massive data traffic is required. The foremost example of such applications is the Internet of Things (IoT).