Fourth Year Projects for 2018-2019
High-Speed Broadband Data Communication System
This project involves mixed-signal, analog, digital, and RF integrated circuit design related to high-speed broadband data communications systems, also referred to as SerDes (Serializer-Deserializers). Such systems are used in the electrical portion of fibre-optic system, or in backplanes, or on printed circuit boards. This is an area of very broad interest in Ottawa - at least four major companies in Ottawa have recently asked me about students with knowledge and experience in this area, so there is good potential for employment opportunities.
- Students would work together as a team, but each student would have resposibility for one or a few components which would ultimately be combined to build the complete system. Example components could include:
- buffer amplifiers,
- driver amplifiers,
- automatic gain control circuits,
- multiplexors or de-multiplexors,
- equalizers (CTLE, DFE, FFE, etc)
- analog-to-digital converter
- components for a clock and data recovery circuit (oscillators, phase detectors, phase rotators, time amplifiers, ...).
- design would be done using the same tools as used in industry to do integrated circuit design and layout, that is, Cadence and a fairly recent CMOS design kit, for example, a 65 nm CMOS process
- Depending on the accomplishments achieved in this project, it could be possible to present this work to one or more of the Ottawa companies involved in the designof such components.
Relevant background from third year, and suggested courses from fourth-year would be any of the circuit design courses. For some aspects of the project, DSP and communication theory courses could also be beneficial.