Research Opportunities

There are opportunities for highly motivated students with interest in research related to RFIC (radio frequency integrated circuit) design. Recently, finding a position as a graduate student has become much more competitive both due to the number of highly qualified students looking for positions and because of funding pressures. As a result, preference is given to students who hold a major scholarship, such as NSERC, and who already have some experience in RFIC design, for example, as an upper year project or work experience. Evidence of high academic achievement is also important. I note that NSERC is given only to the top few percent of Canadian students and provides nearly full funding. Thus having one of these is seen as evidence of being a top student, and it reduces the pressures on funding.

Because the number of research positions is quite limited, I would recommenend that you also consider the following opportunities in a few related areas.

There is an opportunity to work with Prof. Niall Tait, on MEMS and possible applications to RF. Some people believe that Micro Electronic Machines MEMS may revolutionize the design of RF circuits. MEMS show great promise in many areas including filter design which may allow image reject filtering, and switches, which could for example be used for switching between transmit and receive. Beginning work has been done on simple filters and switches, but more work and attempts to include this in an RF circuit still needs to be done. Other applications of MEMS are in optical networks and in the BioMedical area.

Another opportunity is to combine a study of new devices or post-processed material with their incorporation into an analog or RF circuit design. Such work would involve collaboration with one of the faculty members in the devices area. Recent examples have involved the design of post-processed copper over high-K dielectric to build better inductors or transmission lines, used in the design of oscillators and distributed amplifiers. Another example is the use of organic material to design ultra-capacitors for energy storage in ultra low power electronics.