Mar 3 (Mon) @ 10:00am: "Low Phase Noise RF and Microwave Circuits For Electronic-Photonic Synthesizers," Steve Bowers, Assoc. Dir. of the Integrated Electromagnetics, Circuits, & Systems Lab, ECE, UVA

Location: Henley Hall (HH) Auditorium
Research Area: Electronics & Photonics

Abstract

Microwave signals with low phase and timing noise are critical for multiple fields of wide scientific, technological, and societal impact. This includes the areas of precision timekeeping, navigation, communications and radar-based sensing. Conventional high-performance electrical oscillators rely on a resonator to achieve low-phase noise performance; however, the quality factor of the resonator limits the purity of the signal generated by these oscillators. 

On the other hand, Photonic-based microwave generation approaches such as Optical Frequency Division (OFD) have drawn significant attention due to their unique ability to overcome some of the conventional oscillator’s limitations and outperform their traditional counterparts, state-of-the-art electronic oscillators by several orders of magnitude. However, this superior performance comes with restricted tunability that is often in the range of a few percent. As a result, frequency synthesis faces a trade-off between achieving low noise, broad, and fast tunability. 

To leverage the benefits of low-phase noise photonic techniques while maintaining the low additive noise characteristics of the generated microwave signal, a low phase noise electronic frequency synthesizer driven by a photonic oscillator is essential, which ensures the extension of the frequency range of the generated microwave signal to several frequency bands. Therefore, this talk aims to explore the challenges associated with low-phase-noise microwave signal generation and introduce multiple effective techniques to achieve ultra-low phase noise performance across a wide frequency range. 

Bio

Steven M. Bowers received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at San Diego in 2007, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in millimeter-wave circuits and systems from the California Institute of Technology in 2009 and 2014, respectively. He joined the faculty of the Charles L. Brown Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Virginia (UVA) 2014, where he is currently an Associate Professor and the Director of the Integrated Electromagnetics, Circuits and Systems Laboratory. His research interests include integration of photonic and electronic circuits, ultralow-power wireless circuits, high backoff efficiency digital power amplifiers, millimeter-wave transmitters and integrated electromagnetics. Dr. Bowers is a member of IEEE Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi. He was a recipient of the 2012 IEEE RFIC Symposium best paper award, the 2013 IEEE IMS Best Student Paper Awards in 2012, the 2015 IEEE MTT-S Microwave Prize, the NSF CAREER Award in 2019, the 2019 Charles L. Brown ECE Faculty Research Award, the 2019 UVA Provost’s Office Research Achievement Award, and the 2021 and 2023 CLB Faculty Leadership Award.

Hosted By: IEE Seminar – ECE Professor John Bowers

Submitted By: Amy Donnelly <amymdonnelly@ucsb.edu>