IC Design General | IC & IP Cores for Communications
I am a professional IC designer and I am particularly interested in IP core design for communication systems such as satellite broadband modulation and demodulation. More information could be found on my website at http://www.angelia.eu.org/
I orient myself as one of the top modem (modulation + demodulation) IC and IP core designers for communication systems such as satellite broadband modulation and demodulation over the next years. My aim at your team is to explore the optimization of design methodologies.
I have studied satellite and wireless communications over the last couple of years, concentrating on modulation and demodulation for satellite broadband uplink communications in the DVB standard series. I have designed a demodulator IP core based on FPGA and CMOS, and I am preparing for another modem IP core based on probably SDR/DSP etc. In addition I have been preparing for a book called "Modulation and demodulation IC design for satellite communications" with special focus on broadband Internet uplink and LEO satellites operating according to DVB standards. I have been researching and designing ICs for the last 7 years or so, therefore I think I am fairly well prepared for the job on advertisement.
I have been developing modem ICs for satellite broadband Internet, for ground use, over the last years. My designs are involved in satellite / wireless communications, modulation and demodulation, error correction and coding technologies and some wireless communications technologies, as well as IC design technologies, tools and methodologies. I am developing my modem ICs with the latest reconfigurable technologies based mainly on FPGA. On the FPGA many processing units such as GPU, DSP are integrated which can make the modems compatible with as many communications protocols, standards and modulation schemes as possible. I've developed some separate IPs such as modulators, and demodulators and at the moment I am working on a modulator based in FPGA, HDL and others to cope with several modulation schemes such as BPSK, FSK, MSK, OQPSK, UQPSK and for DVB S2X applications. The modem IPs are available as proprietorial IP products in the form of a binary netlist, which can be integrated into modem blocks of other modem vendors.
My IC career started about in 2009 with researches on IC related math, epecially graph theory for IC layout. I have spent quite some time on doing some researches on graph theory involved in quantum circuits, especially the socalled graph embedding and Chimera graph.
I have also investigated a vast number of recently researched next generations of IC technologies after the silicon based ICs are coming to a standstill, among them also quantum chips and quantum computer. Others include spintronic bases, graphene, superconducting computer, single electron, resonant tunneling, DNA, biocomputing, neural computing etc.
How to start with my IC studies and research career ? I was living alone, without an affiliated organization that can finance or support me otherwise during my research, and I could foresee whether my researches will be rewarded. Therefore I have to all myself.
However I don't have the necessary prerequisites and capacity to conduct IC research, such as an expensive lab or a great team, therefore I have to satisfy myself with some mathematical studies in connection with IC technologies.
Of course, almost all math branches are useful in IC technologies, but what I am interested in mostly is the design stage, and particularly the physical design stage, and over there graph theory has been playing a big role, as such I have spent quite some time on graph theory for IC design.
My first topic was graph theory for channel routing, which is the last phase of the physical design and hence also the last phase of the entire chip design process. I have explored a great number of routing algorithms, particularly for FPGA based logic, but finally I decided not to pursue it further because I consider it a waste of time to focus on traditional, silicon based IC technologies, as it is approaching a scaling limit, that is, there is no way to improve the computing power after the CMOS scale reaches nanometer. In other words, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to produce more powerful processors based on the current silicon chips. Therefore one has to find new materials, new physics and new technologies.
And then I have tried a number of new generations of IC technologies, among them, quantum circuits, graphene based circuits, superconducting chips, resonant tunneling circuits, 3D ICs, spintronics based chips, to name a few. But I found that none of them are able to replace the current IC technologies, at least for the near future.
Nevertheless, I have studied somewhat intensively about the graph theory for quantum computing, and at that time I was particularly interested in the socalled Chimera graph applications to quantum computer, which was devloped by D-Wave, a Canadian quantum computer pioneer. In connection with Chimera graph was my indepth review of graph embedding and related branches of graph theory.
Later on I have also stopped my graph theoretic researches on quantum computing due to some serious incidents and instead I was shifting to superconducting quantum computing, beginning with qubits, quantum gates and quantum circuits. It seemed that it was the only type of quantum computer that might become a really useful replacement for the current silicon based computer But the progress was too slow, and I don't want to waste my time on a technology without clear picture. Noone can foresee when a production level quantum computer may come out, therefore this study was also stopped about end 2017, when I determined to shift my focus from graph theory to really IC design technologies. And ths decision was final, regardless how quantum computing is making progress.
The above studies, i.e. satellite broadband Internet related chip design, particularly modems, will remain to be my future orientation of research and design, at least for a decade or so. I will try to write something in these topics, and design some chips or at least some IP cores, as it is a popular fashion now in the industry.
Of course, there are tremendous hurdles and difficulty ahead of my plans, but whatelse has no difficulty if you want to do something?
All the above studies, researches and designs are only my hobby, and I have no intention to commercialize my research and design, and no timetable for these activities and no time-to-market pressure. The only aim is to keep me, my knowledge, and my expertise updated with the development of one of the most important technologies of our age.
I am also well aware that I am far from being specialized in this field. There are a great number of people who are real specialists, both young and experienced. Nevertheless, I will continue my journey on this road and see if I can enjoy my studies someday, somehow.
I am doing all of my above researches on my spare time, because I have to earn a living for myself and as such I can only allocate very limited time to these researches and studies.