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February 17th, 2012
Graduate Seminar
"Analysis and Design of Low-Profile Antennas for Inter-Core Communications"
Dr. Kathleen Melde
Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Arizona
When: Friday, February 17th, 2012 at 3:05 p.m.
Where: Warnock 2250
Abstract
To overcome the limitation of physical wires in multicore computer architectures with more than 100 processor cores, a wireless on-chip interconnect architecture is proposed. This work focuses on the development of a high efficiency antenna for the inter-core communications. In this presentation, a folded monopole antenna over an artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) is described. The analysis of dipole antennas over an AMC revealed that designing the reflection phase of the AMC corresponding to the self-impedance of the antenna element is important for impedance matching. Then, the general design procedure of antennas over an AMC was determined. Based on the procedure, a prototype using a printed circuit board was designed and measured. The antenna demonstrates some of the highest reported efficiency for chip-to-chip interconnects. This antenna is a good candidate for the inter-core communications since:
1. It has a ground shield which prevents the radiation energy from coupling into lossy silicon. The efficiency is greater than 84% at 16–20 GHz.
2. It has a broad radiation pattern.
3. It can be placed on each individual core in terms of size, so it can be integrated directly above the silicon substrate using wafer level packaging technology.
Speaker Biography
Kathleen L. Melde (previously Kathleen L. Virga) is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Arizona. She received the Ph.D. degree from UCLA. From 1985 to 1996 she worked in the Radar Systems Group at Hughes Electronics. She has made contributions to the design and development of phase shifters, RF feed networks, radiator elements and transmit/receive (T/R) modules for airborne phased and active array programs. She has extensive experience in modeling, fabrication and measurement of the performance of antennas, antenna arrays, high-density microwave circuits, and high-speed packaging.
In 1996, Dr. Melde joined the University of Arizona. Her current projects involve antenna element design, high speed electronic packaging, microwave material characterization, and silicon photovoltaics. She has over 80 publications and 5 US patents. She has been an expert witness and consultant in the area of RF circuits and antennas.
In 2012 she was named a University of Arizona College of Engineering Teaching Fellow. In 2010, she received the “Excellence at the Student Interface” award from the UA College of Engineering. She was a recipient of a 2008 IBM Faculty Award. Dr. Melde is a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the Antennas and Propagation (AP-S) and Microwave Theory and Techniques (MTT) Societies. She is a member of URSI. She is a member of the Technical Program Committee for Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging (EPEPS).