L. Richard Carley
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Talk 1: The Design of Integrated Antennas for Efficient Energy Harvesting in Single-Chip RFID Systems
The design of fully integrated RFIDs, ones in which the antenna and the RFID circuitry are all fabricated on the same integrated circuit substrate, is challenging because the small size of the antenna and its proximity to a resistive ground plane (the integrated circuit substrate) both decrease the RF energy that can be harvested to operate the RFID system. In this presentation, we will apply simplifying approximations in order to develop basic equations relating the size and geometry of the antenna to the ability of the RFID system to harvest energy; and, we will validate those equations with electromagnetic field simulations. We will also examine the challenging issue of matching the antenna to the on-chip electronics. The presentation will consider operation across a range of frequencies and will explore both in-plane spiral antennas and out-of-plane helical antennas.
Talk 2: The Design and Fabrication of Single-Chip RFID/Sensor Systems with Integrated Antennas for Biomedical Applications
The ability to implant electronic sensors within the human body enables the real-time sensing of a wide range of important biochemical signals within the body; e.g., continuously sensing the glucose level in a diabetic. And, since we do not want to have wires piercing the skin, it is desirable to power these sensors using RF energy harvesting and to send out the data using RF signals. This presentation will explore the broad potential of RF-powered embedded microsensors and will review serveral of these devices that have already been constructed for a specific sensing applications at the centimeter scale. Finally, we finish this presentation with a discussion of potential approaches for reducing future Biomedical sensors down to the millimeter scale or even to the sub-millimeter scale.
Talk 3: The VLSI Fabrication of Integrated Antennas for Efficient Energy Harvesting in Single-Chip RFID Systems
The design of fully integrated RFIDs, ones in which the antenna and the RFID circuitry are all fabricated on the same integrated circuit substrate, is challenging because the small size of the antenna and its proximity to a resistive ground plane (the integrated circuit substrate) both decrease the RF energy that can be harvested to operate the RFID system. Both of these challenges can be mitigated through the use of advanced Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) wafer-scale fabrication techniques. In this presentation, we introduce efficient on-chip antenna structures for receiving RF power. We then consider a variety of wafer-scale VLSI fabrication techniques that can be employed to fabricate the necessary antenna structures. And, we conclude the presentation by showing examples of actual fabricated antenna structures and estimating their efficiency for energy harvesting in realistic RFID systems.
About the Speaker
Richard Carley (S’74-M’84-SM’90-F’97) received an S.B. in 1976, an M.S. in 1978, and a Ph.D. in 1984, all from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 1984, and in March 2001, he became the STMicroelectronics Professor of Engineering at CMU. Dr. Carley’s research interests include analog and RF integrated circuit design in deeply scaled CMOS technologies, and novel micro-electro-mechanical and nano-electro-mechanical device design and fabrication. For the past several years, Dr. Carley has studied the design of efficient RF energy harvesting devices in sub-millimeter RFID scenarios. Dr. Carley has been granted 24 patents, authored or co-authored over 200 technical papers, and authored or co-authored over 20 books and/or book chapters. He has won numerous awards including Best Technical Paper Awards at both the 1987 and the 2002 Design Automation Conference (DAC), a “Most Influential Paper” award from DAC, and the “Best Panel Session” award at ISSCC in 1993. In 1997, Dr. Carley co-founded the analog electronic design automation startup, Neolinear, which was acquired by Cadence in 2004. Dr. Carley has served on various conference program committees (e.g., CICC, ISLPED, and TMRC), was Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems from 1993-1996, and is the General Chairman for the RFID-TA 2016 Conference in Shunde, China.
