News & Events (2012)

MICS held a holiday season dinner party with families (December 2012)

The MICS group had a dinner party with families at Holiday Inn on December 19, 2012. Nearly all MICS people attended the party with families and enjoyed an informal gathering with colleagues and families. Prof. Dong Ha talked about achievements of MICS since its inception in September and major goals to achieve for the new year. Then, each MICS person showed a couple of pictures of his/her memorable travel. Reza Rezaiesarlak played a traditional Iranian musical instrument, which entertained the people. We wish Happy New Year to the MICS people and their families.

Raman is elected to an IEEE fellow (December 2012)

Prof. Sanjay Raman has been named an IEEE Fellow for his leadership in adaptive microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits. The status of Fellow is one of the most prestigious honors of the institute, bestowed upon less than one-tenth of one percent of the annual voting membership of IEEE.

Prof. Raman has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, and the Virginia Tech College of Engineering Faculty Fellow Award. Ha has served as the associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques and as a member of the technical program committees for the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium and the IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium.

Congratulations, Prof. Raman! It’s a great honor for MICS as well as you. Now, the MICS group has two IEEE Fellows including Prof. Ha.

Salem defended his MS thesis successfully (December 2012)

Jebreel Salem, an MICS graduate student, defended his MS thesis successfully on December 11, 2012. The title of his thesis is “A Reliable CMOS Receiver for Power Line Communications in Integrated Circuits.” Salem designed a PLC receiver in CMOS 0.18 µm technology under the supply voltage of 1.8 V. Measurement results show that the PLC receiver can tolerate the supply voltage drop by 0.423 V or 23.0% under the data rate of 10 Mbps. The power dissipation for the receiver is 3.2 mW, and the core area of the receiver is 72.2 µm x 74.9 µm. Salem will continue to work for his Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Dong Ha.

Congratulations, Jebreel! You are the first MICS student to defend a thesis successfully.

Ha's energy harvesting research is mentioned in The Wall Street Journal (November 2012)

Research conducted by Prof. Dong Ha was included in a recent Wall Street Journal story about emerging technologies that use the human body as an energy source. Prof. Ha’s team is working on circuits and systems for small scale energy harvesting from ambient sources such as solar, vibration, and thermal. His team has developed a power management IC in CMOS 0.18 um technology, which performs maximum power point tracking in analog domain to maximize the net energy harvested. The IC chip was intended for vibration energy harvesting, but can also be applied for solar and thermal energy harvesting including human body heat. Prof. Ha’s team is interested in energy harvesting for medical devices and implants as well as traditional applications such as wireless sensor nodes.

An open position for a graduate research assistant (GRA) in the area of mixed-signal or RF IC design (November 2012)

Prof. Dong Ha is looking for a graduate research assistant (GRA) in the area of mixed-signal or RF IC design.  The position is open immediate and for multiple years. A Ph.D. student is preferred, and an applicant should be a US citizen.

The MICS group and Lockheed Martin (LM) has initiated an RFIC research project, which intends to provide a great learning environment for a selected student, while supporting LM’s areas of research interest. The research topics can be selected from a long term strategy of a comprehensive technology program.  At this time, LM is specifically interested in implementation of RF blocks and integration of an ADC and/or ARM processor within an RF IC. The student, in consultation with Prof. Ha, can select a topic and scale the project relative to his/her interest. The student can have frequent interactions with LM engineers and may work for LM as a summer intern or co-op.

If you are interested in, send your resume to Prof. Ha (ha@vt.edu). Your resume should include the grade point average (GPA), relevant courses taken, and experiences in IC design, if any.

Lockheed Martin becomes the first industry affiliated member (October 2012)

Lockheed Martin (LM) becomes the first member of the Industry Affiliated  Program (IAP) of the MICS group. The primary purpose of the MICS IAP is to establish close collaboration and technology transfer between MICS and its Industry Affiliate partners. LM and MICS will develop a long term comprehensive technology program in RF IC to support interest areas of LM, while advancing MICS research in the area. Based on the long term strategy, LM will suggest several research topics of interest, and MICS will select one or multiple topic(s) to work on. The collaboration between LM and MICS has been spearheaded by Ken Schulz of LM, senior manager of the RF IC group. Ken Schulz is a VT ECE alumnus and served as a liaison for Virginia Tech. Dong Ha, Director of MICS, said that “This is an exemplary collaboration between industry and academia. We are excited about LM’s support of MICS research through the IAP and will do our best to return tangible benefits to LM.”

MICS plans to set up a top class measurement lab in summer 2013 (September 2012)

The MICS group currently has three separate labs, antenna lab, analog IC lab, and RF IC lab, located in Whittemore fourth and sixth floors. The ECE Department has allocated a new lab space of 1400 ft2to MICS to establish a large contiguous measurement lab in the fourth floor of Whittemore Hall, and the new lab space will be available to MICS in May 2013. Considering scarcity of spaces with Virginia Tech and probably other universities in US, it is a big investment for the Department to the MICS group.

MICS plans to set up a top class measurement lab by integrating the existing three labs and acquiring new instruments and workbenches. The new lab will not only increase utilization of instruments, but facilitate MICS students to interact and collaborate on research through sharing the same lab space. It will also ease the inventory and the maintenance and improve the image of the MICS group. The existing lab spaces will be converted into possibly a specialized machine room, a conference room, and student offices.

Inaugural MICS Day event was successful (September 2012)

The MICS group held inaugural “MICS Day” with industry guests, VT faculty, and MICS students and faculty on September 28, 2012, and the formation of the MICS group was announced officially at the event. Prof. Dong Ha (MICS Director) declared at the opening ceremony that “Once we set to sail, we will keep on moving forward until succeed.” ECE Department Head, Prof. Scott Midkiff congratulated the formation of the new research group and emphasized the importance of inter-/multidisciplinary research collaborations in today’s university environment. Two MICS faculty members, Profs. Sanjay Raman and Majid Manteghi, presented their research activities on RF IC design and antennas, respectively.  Industry guests, Ken Schulz (Lockheed Martin), Ken Vanhille (Nuvotrorics), Conrad Andrews (Luna Innovations), and Alex Barry (Prime Photonics), presented research interests of their companies and suggested possible collaborations with the MICS group.  Two directors and a representative of large research centers of Virginia Tech including Prof. Jeff Reed (Wireless@VT), Prof. Patrick Schaumont (Center for Embedded Systems for Critical Applications), and Prof. Scott Huxtable (Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems) also presented research activities of their centers at the event and showed interests in collaborating with MICS. Prof. Kwang-Jin Koh provided a guided tour of the three MICS labs, Analog/mixed signal IC Lab, Antenna Lab, and RF IC Lab, to the guests at the conclusion of the event.