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TARGET.news 13/2007

by Webmaster — last modified 2007-09-25 11:04

The e-letter of the European Project TARGET - Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team

Topics

Events

TOPICS

Our year 3 review – applause, applause!

On March 8 and 9 our project officer and the reviewers came together at ftw in Vienna to assess the TARGET activities during year 3. After two quite long “half” days of intense presentations, questions, and discussions, we got the feedback for our work. Let us present some of the preliminary reviewers’ findings in their own words:

TARGET performance is outstanding.
All project objectives during year three were achieved.
The proposed planning for the next period is satisfactory with focus on increased effort in several WP's, especially FUTURE.
The plan for use and dissemination of knowledge is excellent.
The project management was outstanding, proactive, and efficient.
The resources employed by the contractors are fully justified and all discrepancies were satisfactorily explained.
The costs incurred by the project are fully justified.
There is substantial probability that the project will achieve the results, outlined objectives and impact originally foreseen, and the durable integration at least for the core partners.

In their 39-pages thick final report our reviewers formulated the following conclusions:

“The network is performing very well at bringing together the partners for collaborative research and education, and together they are extending the boundaries of knowledge in the power amplifier field. They need to focus on achieving the technical objectives of the future projects, forging stronger links with the microwave industry, and putting measures in place to ensure the longevity of the TARGET Network of Excellence. The proposed research continues being very relevant, the consortium is performing satisfactorily and the resources spend are commensurate with the work done. Therefore, the project should continue until the completion of the project objectives, keeping the high quality standard established by TARGET.”

From our personal point of view the most important aspect of the review meeting was that we did not need to discuss shortcomings of the project, of work packages, or of our concepts, but that we had time to vividly exchange our thoughts about the fields of our research, of industry needs and of possible future developments. For this we have to thank our project officer, our reviewers, our work package leaders presenting their results, and all of you who contributed during year 3 to the remarkable success of TARGET! Ad majora!

Gottfried Magerl & Sue Ivan

WP 2.3.4 has started - Hierarchical Study of Millimetre Wave Wideband Wireless Systems ( mmWTreeS)

The TARGET WPs to date have mainly been focusing on wireless telecommunication systems in the lower microwave range (e.g. WLAN, UWB, WiMAX …). The short-term commercial deployment justifies this choice. On the other hand, the importance of applications at millimetre wave frequencies is increasing. In the publication “Business Prospects for Commercial mm-Wave MMICs” (IEEE Microwave Magazine, pp. 34-43, Dec. 2005), the following major application areas are identified: terrestrial broadband, satellite communications, and automotive applications. The research challenges on one hand and the forecasted high numbers of volume and return on the other hand justify the motivation for a TARGET FUTURE work package focusing on mm-wave applications. Due to the limited duration of this WP, the research is concentrated on one particular case study.

In a first step, partners perform a detailed system-level study on emerging mm-wave systems, with special attention to high data rate and wireless applications in the 30 GHz – 100 GHz frequency band. Also evolutions in mm-wave device technologies will be tracked, as follow-up of the WP 2.2.A.x activities.

The core part of the work package is concentrated on the high capacity SDH 38 GHz Digital Microwave Radio for wireless infrastructures. The 38 GHz SDH application is investigated from various angles involving a number of research challenges, such as low-cost mm-wave packaging, modelling distributed and dispersive effects, accuracy in mm-wave measurements, PA design aspects, and linearisation techniques at mm-wave frequencies. Eight TARGET partners from five European countries are contributing to this work package.

A final note to explain the meaning of the acronym: the straightforward acronym of “Millimetre Wave Wideband Wireless Systems” would be MMW3S. This can be read as ‘mmWThreeS’, which has the same pronunciation as ‘mmWTreeS’. The word ‘Tree’ has a connection to ‘hierarchy’ (and thus ‘hierarchical study’) and also to cross-fertilization (and thus ‘integration’), and finally, the growth of a tree symbolises the FUTURE.

Dominique Schreurs

DeLFI - Design Lab & Foundry Interface

One of TARGET’s goal is to improve power amplifier (PA) design and realisation through the TARGET-Design Lab & Foundry Interface (TARGET-De.L.F.I., www.target-delfi.org), aimed to provide both an effective interface with selected European Foundries and a European skilled Centre for performing and/or refining PA designs.

Foundry Interface
In the frame of the Foundry interface, an agreement was signed between the German SiGe Foundry IHP (represented by Prof. Wolfgang Mehr, Director and Dr. Manfred Stöcker, Administrative Director) and TARGET-DeLFI (Prof. Paolo Colantonio, Project manager).
The objective of the agreement was the exchange of research activities carried out by TARGET scientists for free area on wafer runs of a number of innovative processes. The TARGET activity, focused on SiGe HBT device non linear characterisation has been performed in cooperation by the laboratories of the University of Roma (MiMEG), Polytechnic of Turin (POLITO) and University of Florence (MIDRA).
In exchange of the device characterization, IHP has offered a free waver run on April 24th 2007, through which several MMIC circuits (designed for the activities of WP2.3.3 MUTATIS) will be realised. A further free area has been offered for the next process run scheduled in October.

Software Vendor Cooperation
TARGET-DeLFI and ANSOFT are strongly cooperating in the frame of microwave circuit design and CAD software development. As a result TARGET-DeLFI will make use of the ANSOFT Designer CAD software to develop MMICs from the first prototype step right up to the final MMIC layout stage. Therefore DeLFI established cooperation with ANSOFT, to jointly develop new device models for non linear circuit design, integrated in new generation software tools.
In this frame, a one day tutorial on computer aided microwave circuit design was organized in TARGET’S SUMMER SCHOOL in Barcelona. The tutorial was held by an ANSOFT engineer to demonstrate the Nexxim software features and its capability to perform MMIC circuit design and implementation. Actual cooperation is in progress for the development and implementation of Verilog-A user defined models in the ANSOFT simulator (Nexxim).

Design Centre
The DeLFI structure has hosted several PhD students exploiting the TARGET exchange program, for training on the job activity devoted to the design of high performance power amplifiers. In this frame, a 5W Doherty PA has been designed at 2.1 GHz, based on a 1 mm GaN HEMT device provided by Selex SI, Italy. A picture of the realised amplifier and the measured performance are reported in the following, resulting in state of the art Doherty amplifier. More details on this amplifier are available on the paper accepted to the 2007 European Microwave Conference.

Another state of the art amplifier designed by DeLFI is a harmonic tuned dual-band (2.5-3.5GHz) power amplifier based on GaN technology (provided by Selex-SI). The design and amplifier realization has been performed by DeLFI staff, resulting in the realisation of the first true concurrency and high efficiency power amplifiers. A picture and the corresponding measures are reported in the following figures. Again, further details are available on the paper accepted to the 2007 European Microwave Conference.

Paolo Colantonio

eStrategies Europe - feature article on TARGET

The eStrategies Europe edition of March 2007 features a 2-page article on TARGET on page 44 'Collaboration brings results on Power Amplifiers'.

Read the article (PDF).

Sue Ivan

Jobs on www.target-net.org

The TARGET homepage is being used increasingly by our partners as a tool for job exchange. We currently have 5 vacancies posted, namely:

PhD/PostDoc positions in MMIC Technology (NTNU and Nera Networks)
1 year post-doctoral position (IEMN, Power Component research team)
Short-term post doctoral position (UCD)
24-month Experienced Researcher (FORTH)
RF Power Amplifier Researcher (Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent)

For more information on these vacancies, and for future postings, please visit our website regularly.

Sue Ivan

EVENTS

4th TARGET Summer School - CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
in conjunction with the GE 2007 – International Doctoral Summer School


Date:	18-20/6/2007
Location:	Lerici, Italy
Programme:	download PDF

Main topics:

From the Device Physics to the Model
Efficient CAD tools for Modelling
Nonlinear empirical models of microwave transistors
Front-end architectures for Software Defined Radio
Debug of wideband digital radio and demo
Microwave Circuits Analysis and Design Basics
Design Synthesis of Matching Network in Microwave FET Amplifiers
Microwave Power Amplifier Design Basics
Basics on microwave Linear measurements, VNA fundamentals and calibration techniques
Advanced Non-Linear measurements: Load/Source-Pull technique and time domain analysis

This Summer School is mainly intended for PhD students who have knowledge on the aforementioned topics.

Registration is now open - send an email to Alessandro Cidronali (acidronali@ingfi1.ing.unifi.it) with the topic ‘GE 2007 – International Doctoral Summer School – TARGET’ if you wish to participate. Please note that the number of participants is limited to 10-15 only, and please wait for the confirmation email from the organizers before making any flight and accommodation bookings. For the selected TARGET participants, the travel and accommodation costs will be fully reimbursed. For details on accommodation, location and other vital information, please visit the official website http://www.ge2007.eu.

Gianfranco Manes

TARGET Days - From Goals to Achievements

In four years TARGET has become a new European standard for joint research, demonstrating the capabilities to transform a preliminary idea into actual results, achieving state-of-the-art results in topics ranging from device technology to device characterisation and modelling, from design of power amplifiers and linearisers to transmitter and system design for broadband wireless access.

To highlight the major outcomes and successful results achieved in those 4 years of TARGET activities, and with the aim to create a common discussion platform, the conclusive event TARGET Days - From Goals to Achievements has been organised on December, 16-17, 2007, in Italy.

The event is organised in conjunction with the international conference ISMOT'07 , and it is also open to non-TARGET members (industry, academia, or European Commission members) who want to learn more about our successful Network of Excellence. Further information, call for papers, and venue information are available on the TARGET web site .

Please mark this TARGET conclusive event in your diary

Date:	16-17 December 2007
Location:	Villa Mondragone, Monte Porzio Catone (Roma, Italy)

Teresa M. Martín Guerrero
Paolo Colantonio

ISMOT 2007

The 11th International Symposium on Microwave and Optical Technology (ISMOT-2007) will be held at Villa Mondragone, Monte Porzio Catone, Roma, Italy from 17-21 December 2007. Since its very beginning ISMOT has raised a general interest among the scientific community, becoming one of the best established international microwave conferences, where attendants come from all over the world.

The research fields covered by ISMOT are in the area of microwave components and circuits, optical components, microwave and optical communication systems, electromagnetic theory, antennas, microwave photonics, and all other topics concerning the microwave and optical community. The fundamental goal of ISMOT is to offer an international forum for the exchange of new ideas, thoughts, and realizations on physics, technologies, and applications of microwave, optoelectronics and related fields.

To the forthcoming celebration, I have the honour of being appointed as Symposium Chairman. Therefore I am pleased to welcome you to ISMOT-2007 and to invite you to submit papers. For your information, further details on the event (registration, accommodation, logistics) are being progressively transferred to the Conference site, http://www.ismot2007.org . All the authors of contributions are asked to submit a summary of the work they intend to present to the conference (from two to a maximum of four pages), using the submission system at http://www.ismot2007.org/paper . The abstract (from two up to four pages) is to be organised according to the template in http://www.ismot2007.org/images/ISMOT_Manuscript_Template.doc .

Please mark this event in your diary:

Date:	17-21 December 2007
Location:	Villa Mondragone, Monte Porzio Catone (Roma, Italy)

Franco Giannini, ISMOT Symposium Chairman

TARGET Winter School 2007 - a review

Title: "CAD Implementation of Nonlinear Device Model and Advanced Measurements"

Continuing the traditional Summer/Winter School series, during the fourth week of February 2007 an intensive five-day Winter School focused on CAD Implementation and Advanced Measurements aspects for Nonlinear Device Modelling was held in the Telecommunication School of the University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain. This Winter School was mainly intended for new PhD students and researchers having a limited knowledge in this special topic. The basics as well as advanced methods for microwave device characterisation and model implementation into commercial CAD tools was presented by 10 well known TARGET experts in the field.

Overview on Electrical Equivalent Circuit and Data-Based Models
ADS- SDD structure and modelling facilities
AWR MwOffice- Model Wizard description (compiled model)
XML format: Data base description for Device Modelling
VERILOGA model language
ADS - User Defined Model (compiled model)
Model Oriented CAD test benches on MwOfice and ADS
Advanced Model-Oriented measurement setups

An interesting amount of university students and industry engineers (including 5 TARGET non-members) attended the course, sharing a common interest on model implementation from a practical point of view. Although the courses obviously introduced a minimum of theoretical aspects, emphasis was mainly given on electron device implementation issues when working with commercial CAD tools for highly efficient and linear Power Amplifier design.

This is why practical computer work-tutorial (representing a 36% share of the teaching) was offered as a direct extension of the formal presentations which proved to be an innovative and really successful philosophy. To this end, a set of 20 PCs with all the necessary CAD facilities were available for attendees.

As a consequence, students were really interested in the lectures and they actively worked in the practical sessions. This Winter School welcomed 55 attendees out of 57 registrations from 22 institutions out of 10 countries.

On the last day, a certificate of attendance detailing 25 academic hours was given to each participant. This directly corresponds to an ECTS credit, which PhD students can present to their respective Universities in charge of the doctorate programme.

Thanks to the Government of Cantabria, we were given the opportunity to visit on Wednesday the "Altamira cave” (which is perhaps the most important expression of the Palaeolithic art in the world and became a World Heritage site in 1985) as well as the wonderful "Soplao caves" in the high mountains of Cantabria where stalactites and stalagmites are orthogonal to the laws of the Physics.

Angel Mediavilla

TARGET International Workshop on ‘Technology of Multimode-Multiband Transceivers’ - a review

(Technical Programme)

On April 17 th and 18 th a TARGET international Workshop on ‘Multimode-Multiband Transceiver' was held in Florence, organised by partner MIDRA and hosted by the University of Florence in the historic Aula Magna at the Rettorato premises.

The aim of the Workshop was to focus on transceiver architectures capable of implementing the new broadband data access applications in an `always and everywhere' global connectivity approach. The 1 ½ day high-level Workshop with international speakers from Europe and the US was organised in three different sessions, each followed by a panel discussion: design and modelling tools, system architectures and enabling and future technologies.

The opening session was dedicated to an overview of the Commission's strategies in the area of micro- and nano-components, given by Andrej Litwin (TARGET project officer) and to a comprehensive overview at system and application level given by Mici Mc Cullagh.

In the session ‘Design and modelling tools' David Root, Tom Brazil and Fabio Filicori reviewed the state-of-the-art in the field of behavioural models, CAD methodologies and non-linear models for PA, offering the very latest results of their research activity.

In the second session on ‘System architectures' the opening talk by Vijay Nair gave a wide overview of mixed network wireless systems, followed by Alessandro Cidronali who addressed the issue of linearization in PA also exhibiting simulations and experimental results. Two more talks followed by Franco Giannini on dual-band PA, including recent results on high efficiency configurations, and Yorgos Katsoulis on passive components for wideband design.

In the evening a dinner at Palazzo Capponi all'Annunziata concluded the first day of the workshop.

The second half day was dedicated to ‘Enabling and future technologies' where the issues of re-configurability were specifically addressed. Due to a sudden and unpredictable commitment, Samir El Ghazaly (University of Tennessee) was not able to attend and his talk was given by Vijay Nair. The talk encompassed various aspects of reconfigurable antennas for universal wireless receiver, giving a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art and was followed by the talk by Dietmar Koether on reconfigurable criteria for PA design.

The rest of the session was more focussed to enabling or emerging technologies; Stepan Lucyszyn addressed the issue of MEMS technology impact on transceiver architectures, Reinhard Scholz described mixed signal technology impact and eventually Roberto Sacchi addressed more instrumentation related aspects concerning debugging of digital radio.

The workshop was concluded after one and half day of intensive technical sessions, just in time to give the participants the opportunity to have a visit of Florence on a lovely springtime day.