Introduction

  • Title of Main-project : Electronics-Based Living Technologies
  • Title of Sub-project: Advanced Microwave and SOP Integration Technologies
  • Name of Principal(Chief) Investigator: Ruey-Beei Wu
  • Institution/Department: Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate Institute of Communication Engineering

Due to the advances of CMOS process technologies, Taiwan has been pioneering in the realization of low-cost monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuits (MMIC) by silicon. In combination with the system-on-package (SOP) approach based on low loss substrate by low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) or Integrated Passive Device (IPD), this represents a unique opportunity to develop miniature, high-performance, cost-effective MMIC’s, modules and systems that could address the increasing demand in terms of multiple Giga bits-per- second (Gbps) data rate throughput of the emerging dense wireless communication systems. Several high date rate wireless standards with multiple Gbps radio link have been proposed to address the future demands in various applications, e.g., wireless HD media streaming (W-HDMI) for consumer electronics and medical surgery use, WPAN and Ad hoc P2P connections for wireless USB3.0, wireless docking stations, wireless Gbps Ethernet, wireless PCIe, and so on.

In an era where multi-Gbps data rate is desired, the UWB with limited throughput of 480Mbps is insufficient. It becomes promising to employ the 60GHz band since its wider spectrum enables multi-Gbps robust radio link and the worldwide license free spectrum exists. However, the design of low cost Si-based MMIC, the packaging of the 60GHz radio, and the antenna optimization for P2P or point to multi-points performance represents major challenges, among others. With the 10-fold increase in the data link, this also manifests the key enabling technology to the wired and wireless convergence in the 21st century communication systems for the electronics-based living technology.

In this integrated project, various related topics on the research of advanced microwave technology, MMIC design, and development of RF-SOP integration technologies for multi- Gbps radio link applications will be covered, such as Si-based and III-V compound MMIC’s design, measurement, modeling, and high-level integration transceivers, IPD transmission line and flip chip interconnects characterization, modeling of 3D packaging in Si, passive embedded SoC using novel transmission structures, SOP millimeter-wave passive components by LTCC or IPD, EMC deisgn for coupling noise reduction, advanced miniaturized broadband planar antennas design, and smart antennas design in seriously fading environment, thereby achieving main theme of exploring the MMIC, SOP, and smart antenna technologies for civil applications.

In addition, strong academia and industry collaboration will be set up and pushed forward with TSMC for MMIC foundry and chip scale integration, ASE for IPD process, ACX for LTCC manufacture, and Nanya, Inventec, Foxconn for system applications, which are the flagships in Taiwan’s IC and packaging manufacturing and lead industrial researches in computing and consumer electronics, thus aiming to strengthen Taiwan’s competitiveness in science and technology.