Power line communications (PLC) has been considered by utility companies for over a half century and for home networking in recent years. However, PLC at the IC level, or even at the PCB level, has not been investigated outside Dr. Ha's research group. This thesis investigates the feasibility of PLC over power distribution networks (PDNs) of advanced microprocessors. A PDN in an integrated circuit (IC) is ubiquitous as seen by the internal logic, i.e., a power line is accessible to any internal node. This suggests the possibility of monitoring or controlling the logic value of any internal node through a power line by attaching a simple sensing/control circuit to the node. Routing the data through a power line avoids the necessity of preplanning the routing of a data path between the node and an external data pin. PLC over microprocessor PDNs also provide a viable means for "run-time testing" as well as for monitoring the so called "large time-constant errors" resulting from aging and temperature variations. In this thesis, we considered impulse-based ultra wideband (I-UWB) communication technology for PLC over PDNs of microprocessors. I-UWB has several advantages for PLC over PDNs due to its robustness to multipath effects, simple hardware for transmission and reception of pulses and, more importantly, reduced interference to the normal operation of microprocessors. A microprocessor PDN is heavily decoupled to damp the resonances in the power supply impedance as well as to reduce the slew rate of current variations by locally supplying (sinking) currents to (from) the switching nodes. Consequently, a PDN behaves like a bulky lowpass filter for high frequency signals. However, the inductance component of decoupling capacitors becomes more significant beyond the self resonant frequency (SRF) of the capacitors. So, a PDN becomes essentially a distributed circuit beyond the SRF and is no longer a lowpass filter. Indeed, high frequency PDN models developed earlier at Dr. Ha's group show that there exist multiple frequency bands where high frequency signals can propagate through the PDN with relatively low attenuation [3] [4]. The major contributions of our research lie in three areas. First, we verified existence of passbands on PDN's transfer characteristics through measurements. We carried out high frequency measurements on the PDN of Intel's 65 nm Pentium processor and 45 nm Core 2 Duo processor. We measured PDN transfer characteristics up to several GHz from a core power pin on a tester board to an on-chip power node for both active and cold microprocessor dies. The measurements show the existence of narrow, sporadic and migratory passbands i.e. location of passbands change from one generation of processor to the next. The migratory nature of passbands requires the I-UWB receiver and a transmitter to cover a wide range of frequencies rather than a specific passband. Second, we have developed a PDN communication channel model for system level study. To develop the channel model, we also performed noise measurements on Intel microprocessors. The link budget was calculated based on the channel model and appropriate modulation schemes were suggested through the system level study. Third, we investigated design of an I-UWB receiver and a transmitter, which cover a wide bandwidth. The proposed receiver and transmitter designs were evaluated through simulations in TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS process. Our simulation indicates that the PLC over a PDN is feasible with a relatively simple digital-process friendly I-UWB receiver and a transmitter. / Ph. D.

Broadband wireless communications require wideband antennas to support large number of users and higher data rates. Desirable features of a wideband antenna are low-profile, dual-polarization and wide bandwidth in a compact size. Many existing wideband antennas are large in size and some have only circular polarization. On the other hand low-profile, dual-polarized antennas frequently have limited bandwidth. This dissertation reports on results from original research into several new wideband antennas. All are compact and planar, and many are low-profile and dual-polarized. Since 1994, Virginia Tech Antenna Group (VTAG) has performed research on the wideband, low-profile and dual-polarized antennas of compact size. This research resulted in the following antenna innovations: the Fourpoint, Fourtear, PICA (Planar Inverted Cone Antenna), diPICA (dipole PICA) and LPdiPICA (Low-Profile diPICA) antennas. They are all planar in geometry so one can easily construct them in a compact size. The antennas were characterized and investigated with extensive simulations and measurements. The computed and measured data demonstrates that some of the antennas appear to have the characteristics of the self-complementary antenna and most of the proposed antennas provide more than a 10:1 impedance bandwidth for a VSWR < 2. Patterns, however, are degraded at the high end of the frequency. Several tapered ground planes were proposed to improve the radiation pattern characteristics without degrading the impedance performance. A simulation result proposed a possibility of another antenna inventions providing 10:1 pattern bandwidth with the 10:1 impedance bandwidth. Research into wideband antennas demonstrated that the newly invented antennas are closely related each other and are evolved from a primitive element, PICA. Not only the comprehensive investigation but also a practical antenna design has been done for commercial base-station array antennas and to phased array antennas for government applications. This dissertation presents results of comprehensive investigation of new planar wideband antennas and its usefulness to the broadband wireless communications. / Ph. D.

This thesis investigates a new data communication method in high speed integrated circuits using power distribution networks (PDNs). The conventional purpose of PDNs in integrated circuits (ICs) is to deliver power to internal nodes of an IC while meeting a level of power integrity. As the power consumption increases for very large scale integration (VLSI) systems, the number of power/ground pins increases as well. In this thesis, we propose to use PDNs for dual purposes, delivery of power and one-/two-way data communications, which is highly beneficial for pin-limited high performance ICs. To this end, we investigate signaling methods for a microscopic communication channel. Impulse-based ultra wideband (UWB) signaling is selected due to its robustness to noise and wideband characteristics. Next, we study a planar structure IC package based on the cavity resonator model (CRM) as a communication channel. Impedance characteristics of a planar structure IC package and other relevant components of an IC are important, and they are investigated for data transmission over power distribution networks. Another important aspect of the study is data transmission and reception, which we investigate through simulations. Finally, we study one possible application for one way communications, massive parallel scan design, which greatly shortens the testing time at moderate overhead. The performance is measured with eye diagrams and bit error rates (BERs) under the presence of voltage drop, simultaneous switching noise, and thermal noise. / Ph. D.

Acquisition of ultra-wideband signals by means of array antennas requires essentially frequency-independent radiation characteristics over the entire bandwidth of the signal in order to avoid distortions. Factors contributing to bandwidth limitation of arrays include array factor, radiation characteristics of the array element, and inter-element mutual coupling. Strictly speaking, distortion-free transmission or reception of ultra-wideband signals can be maintained if the magnitude of the radiated field of the array remains constant while its phase varies linearly with frequency over the bandwidth of interest. The existing wideband-array synthesis methods do not account for all factors affecting the array bandwidth and are often limited to considering the array factor and not the total field of the array in the synthesis process. The goal of this study is to present an ultra-wideband array synthesis technique taking into account all frequency-dependent properties, including array total pattern, phase of the total radiated field, element field, element input impedance, and inter-element mutual coupling. The proposed array synthesis technique is based on the utilization of frequency-adaptive element excitations in conjunction with expressing the total radiated field of the array as a complex Fourier series. Using the proposed method, element excitation currents required for achieving a desired radiation pattern, while compensating for frequency variations of the element radiation characteristics and the inter-element mutual coupling, are calculated. An important consideration in the proposed ultra-wideband array design is that the "phase bandwidth", defined as the frequency range over which the phase of the total radiated field of the array varies linearly with frequency, is taken into account as a design requirement in the synthesis process. Design examples of linear arrays with desired radiation patterns that are expected to remain unchanged over the bandwidth of interest are presented and simulated. Two example arrays, one with a wire dipole as its element and another using an elliptically-shaped disc dipole as the element are studied. Simulation results for far-field patterns, magnitude and phase characteristics, and other performance criteria such as side-lobe level and scanning range are presented. Synthesis of two-dimensional planar arrays is carried out by employing the formulations developed for linear arrays but generalized to accommodate the geometry of planar rectangular arrays. As example designs, planar arrays with wire dipoles and elliptical-shaped disc dipoles are studied. The simulation results indicate that synthesis of ultra-wideband arrays can be accomplished successfully using the technique presented in this work. The proposed technique is robust and comprehensive, nonetheless it is understood that the achieved performance of a synthesized array and how closely the desired performance is met also depends on some of the choices the array designer makes and other constraints, such as number of elements, type of element, size, and ultimately cost. / Ph. D.

Yes / Four versions of the compact hexagonal-shaped monopole printed antennas for UWB applications are presented. The first proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 127.48 % (3.1 GHz to 14 GHz), which satisfies the bandwidth for ultra-wideband communication systems. To reduce the foreseen co-channel interference with WLAN (5.2GHz) and X-Band systems (10GHz), the second and third antennas type were generated by embedding hexagonal slot on the top of the radiating patch. The integration of the half and full hexagonal slots created notched bands that potentially filtered out the sources of interference, but were static in nature. Therefore, a fourth antenna type with tuneable-notched bands was designed by adding a varactor diode at an appropriate location within the slot. The fourth antenna type is a dual-notch that was electronically and simultaneously tuned from 3.2GHz to 5.1GHz and from 7.25GHz up to 9.9GHz by varying the bias voltages across the varactor. The prototypes of the four antenna versions were successfully fabricated and tested. The measured results have good agreement with the simulated results. / This work is carried out under the grant of the Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT - Portugal), with the reference number: SFRH/BPD/95110/2013.

Power line communications (PLC) as applied to electrical power grid is known since long; however, PLC in microprocessors was recently introduced by VTVT Lab. Since power distribution network (PDN) inside a microprocessor is ubiquitous, therefore, any node inside a microprocessor can be accessed by attaching a simple communication circuit to it. The scheme is extremely attractive as it avoids the routing overhead of the data-path between an internal node and an I/O pin. A number of applications are possible for PLC in microprocessors such as on-line testing, monitoring/control of internal nodes, fault diagnosis etc. Feasibility of the PLC approach has been extensively studied by earlier researchers at VTVT. The feasibility studies investigated the frequency response of a microprocessor's PDN and looked for existence of passbands — frequency bands where signal attenuation through the PDN is small. Two different approaches were followed—the first approach employed analytical modeling of the high frequency characteristics of the PDN, while the second approach conducted measurements on Intel® microprocessors' PDN. Although, differences were observed in the results of the two approaches; both the approaches demonstrated existence of passbands, thus affirming the feasibility of the PLC scheme. This thesis presents a system level study conducted to estimate performance of the PLC scheme. Measurement results were used to model the PDN channel. The study provides useful insights for the design of microprocessor level PLC system. Specifically, the study estimates optimal pulse width required to maximize the system performance and the range of achievable data-rates. The study demonstrates that it is feasible to communicate data through a microprocessor's PDN without inducing large disturbances on the power line. The other work presented in this thesis is the design of low power receiver for microprocessor level PLC, also called data recovery block. The proposed design of data recovery block employs Correlation Detection (CD) receiver architecture. The design has been implemented in IBM 0.13 µm CMOS process and has been verified to operate reliably across Process, Voltage and Temperature variations. The design has a small foot-print of 300 µm x 160 µm and consumes 3.58 mW while operating from 1.2 V power supply. / Master of Science

Ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems are highly promising because of their capabilities for high data rate information transmission with low power consumption and low interference and their immunity to multipath fading. More importantly, they have the potential to relieve the "spectrum drought" caused by the explosion of wireless systems in the past decade by operating in the same bands as existing narrowband systems. With the extremely large bandwidth of UWB signals, we need to revisit UWB channel modeling. Specifically we need to verify whether or not the traditional tap-line delay channel model is still applicable to UWB. One essential task involved in channel modeling is deconvolving the channel impulse response from the measurement data. Both frequency domain and time domain techniques were studied in this work. After a comparison, we examined a time domain technique known as the CLEAN algorithm for our channel modeling analysis. A detailed analysis of the CLEAN algorithm is given, as it is found that it is sufficient for our application. The impact of per-path pulse distortion due to various mechanisms on the tap-delay line channel model is discussed. It is shown that with cautious interpretation of the channel impulse response, the tap-line delay channel model is still applicable to UWB. / Master of Science

No / In this paper, low profile planar Metamaterial-Inspired coplanar fed waveguide antenna is presented for WLAN and Ultra-Wideband applications. The antenna is based on a simple strip loaded to a rectangular patch and zigzag E-shape metamaterial-inspired unit cell. The idea behind the proposed antenna is to enable miniaturization effect. The proposed antenna can provide dual band operation, the first one is a Wi-Fi band at 2.45 GHz having impedance bandwidth of 150MHz, the second one is an ultra wide band extended from 4.2 GHz to 6.5 GHz. Two antennas are designed and fabricated with and without metamaterial-inspired loading. The simulated and measured results regarding Return loss (S11), Gain and Radiation pattern are discussed.

No / A small dielectric resonator antenna has been designed for ultra wideband (UWB) communication system applications. The antenna element is a rectangular low permittivity ceramic block, with a dielectric constant of 9.4, and the modified T-shaped feed network includes a 50 ohm microstrip line to achieve strong coupling, and some bandwidth enhancement. The antenna performance is simulated and measured over a frequency band extending from 3100 MHz to 5500 MHz; the impedance bandwidth over this interval is 55.8% with VSWR <; 2, making the antenna suitable for UWB applications.

UWB communication is an attractive technology that has the potential to provide low-power, low-complexity, and high-speed communications in short range links. One of the main challenges of the UWB communications is the highly frequency-selective channel, which induces hundreds of overlapped copies of the transmitted pulse with different delays and amplitudes. To collect the energy of these multipath components, coherent Rake receivers are proposed, but suffer from high implementation and computational costs on channel estimation. To avoid the stringent channel estimation, several noncoherent receivers, including energy detector (ED) and transmitted reference (TR), are proposed at the cost of degraded performance. In addition, when taking into account practical issues of UWB communications, e.g., non-Gaussian impulsive noise, non-ideal antennas, and limited, significant performance degradation may be introduced by noncoherent receivers. In this dissertation, we will present low-complexity, high-performance, noncoherent receiver designs for UWB communications that i) avoid the stringent channel estimation; ii) lower the computational complexity of the existing receivers with the aid of advanced digital signal processing techniques; and iii) improve the error performance of the noncoherent receivers by accommodating practical imperfections. First, we propose three multi-symbol detectors (MSDs) for multi-symbol different detection (MSDD), which has recently caught attention in UWB communications because of its high performance without requiring explicit channel estimation. To alleviate the non-deterministic polynomial hardness (NP-hard) of MSDD, we analyze the statistical model of MSDD and propose an iterative MSD and two MSDs based on relaxation technique with near-optimal performance and low complexity. Moreover, the error performance of MSDs is further enhanced by exploiting joint soft-input soft-output MSDD and forward error correction codes. Next, we consider the non-Gaussian noise in the presence of multi-access interference, which is impulsive when the number of active users is small. To mitigate the impulsive noise effect, in this dissertation, we propose new differential UWB receivers based on the generalized Gaussian distribution and Laplace distribution and achieve better error performance. Another main issue of UWB communications is the limited radio coverage. To extend the coverage and improve the performance of UWB systems, we focus on a novel differentially encoded decode-and-forward (DF) non-cooperative relaying scheme. Putting emphasis on the general case of multi-hop relaying, we illustrate a novel algorithm for the joint power allocation and path selection (JPAPS), minimizing an approximate of the overall bit error rate (BER). A simplified scheme is also presented, which reduces the complexity to O(N²) and achieves a negligible performance loss. Finally, we concentrate on code-multiplexing (CM) systems, which have recently drawn attention mainly because they enable noncoherent detection without requiring either a delay component, as in TR, or an analog carrier, as in frequency-shifted reference. In this dissertation, we propose a generalized code-multiplexing (GCM) system based on the formulation of a constrained mixed-integer optimization problem. The GCM extends the concept of existing CM while retaining their simple receiver structure, even offering better BER performance and a higher data rate in the sense that more data symbols can be embedded in each transmitted block. Moreover, the impacts of non-ideal antennas on the GCM systems are investigated given some practical antenna measurement data and IEEE 802.15.4a channel environments.