The 2018 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC 2018) will be held in Philadelphia from June 10-12. The RFIC Symposium is the premier integrated circuit (IC) design conference focused exclusively on the latest advances in RF, microwave and mmWave IC technologies and designs, as well as innovations in high frequency analog/mixed-signal ICs and ultra-low power radios. With a wide range of papers from industry and academia, all attendees will find plenty of relevant and technically interesting topics to choose from.
The RFIC Symposium is an annual IEEE conference that is co-located with IMS, ARFTG and the Industry Exhibition to form Microwave Week, the largest worldwide RF/microwave technical meeting of the year. In addition to the vast array of technical content, attendees will have the opportunity to interact with world experts, expand their networks and leave invigorated with new ideas and a drive to innovate.
RFIC 2018 will begin on Sunday, June 10 with 12 RFIC-focused workshops—eight full day and four half-day. In addition, there will be several joint RFIC/IMS workshops on Sunday and Monday. These workshops cover a wide range of advanced topics in RFIC technology and IC design, including 5G systems and beyond.
Sunday’s RFIC-focused workshops include the following topics:
- RFIC Design in CMOS FinFET and FD-SOI
- ICs for Quantum Computing and Quantum Technologies
- 5G mmWave Power Amplifiers, Transmitters and Beamforming Techniques with Massive MIMO
- eXtreme‐Bandwidth Architecture for RF and mmWave Transceivers in Nanoscale CMOS
- Integrated mmWave and THz Sensing Technology for Automotive, Industrial and Healthcare
- Advanced Integrated RF Filtering Circuits and Techniques
- Synthesizer Design and Frequency Generation/Synchronization Schemes for High Performance Wireless Systems
- High Performance WLAN Transceiver Design and Calibration Techniques
- High Efficiency Power Amplification for Emerging Wireless Communication Solutions from Devices to Circuits and Systems
- mmWave Systems, Manufacturing, Packaging and Built‐In Self-Test
- Towards Direct Digital RF Transceivers
- Ultra-Low Power Transceiver SoC Designs for IoT Applications
Following the full day of workshops, the RFIC Plenary Session will be held on Sunday evening beginning with conference highlights, the presentation of the Student Paper Awards and the Industry Paper Awards. The plenary session talks begin with Zachary J. Lemnios, vice president of science, technology and government programs at IBM Research, who will talk about “Compact Silicon Integrated mmWave Circuits: From Skepticism to 5G and Beyond.” The second talk will be given by NXP’s Automotive CTO, Lars Reger, who will share his vision on “The Road Ahead for Autonomous Cars—What’s In for RFIC.” Immediately following the Plenary Session will be the RFIC Reception that will highlight our industry showcase and student paper finalists in an engaging social and interactive technical evening event supported by the RFIC Symposium corporate sponsors. You will not want to miss the RFIC Reception this year.
Figure 1 Interactive Forum poster session (Courtesy of RFIC Symposium).
On Monday and Tuesday, RFIC will have multiple tracks of oral technical paper sessions as well as the popular Interactive Forum poster session (see Figure 1). Beginning in 2017, the theme of the RFIC Symposium has been on emerging 5G technology. There are several 5G-focused sessions presenting full microwave and mmWave transceivers with integrated antennas, various beam-steering techniques, building blocks for 5G and sub-6 GHz circuit techniques related to transceiver linearization, harmonic rejection and efficiency enhancement. In addition to 5G, the industry push for autonomous driving highlights the need for better sensing. We also see a trend going forward with sessions focused on automotive radar, IoT and THz imaging.
RFIC 2018 has 17 Technical Paper Sessions on Monday and Tuesday with the following topics:
- Building Blocks for 5G Transceivers
- Advances in Packaging, Modeling and Optical Phased Arrays
- Techniques for High Performance Frequency Synthesis
- 28 GHz Phased Arrays, Beamformers and Sub-Components for 5G Applications
- Technology Optimization for RF Applications
- ADC-Based RF/Mixed-Signal Systems and Wireline Transceiver Techniques
- RF Front-Ends for Emerging Wireless Paradigms
- Mixed Signal Transmitters and Power Amplifiers
- cm/mmWave CMOS Integrated Phased Array Building Blocks
- Ultra-Low Power Radios for Security, Ranging and Connectivity
- Silicon Integrated mmWave Transmitters
- Highly Efficient mmWave Oscillators with Wide Tuning Range
- mmWave Power Amplifiers
- Submillimeter Wave and Terahertz ICs
- mmWave Radar and Beamforming Transceivers
- mmWave LNAs and RF Receiver Front-Ends
- Wireless Transceivers and Transmitters for Connectivity and Cellular
Enlightening lunchtime panels focusing on the Microwave Week key themes will be featured on both days. The Monday panel session, titled “How Will the Future Self-Driving Cars See? LIDAR versus Radar,” will cover the state of the art in radar and LIDAR technologies and attempt to draw contrasts between the two approaches in the context of self-driving cars. The Tuesday panel session, titled “Can A Residential Wireless Gbps Internet Connection Compete with Wired Alternatives?,” will convene expert panelists to discuss some of the technology advancements that are enabling Gbps internet connections and will debate the merits of both the wired and wireless technology alternatives. Please make sure to bring your engaging opinions and questions to both panel sessions as they will be highly interactive.
On behalf of the RFIC Steering and Executive Committees, we welcome you to join us at the 2018 RFIC Symposium in Philadelphia. Please visit the RFIC 2018 website at http://rfic-ieee.org/ for more details and updates.