Student project:  Wireless Transceiver Design for Ultra-wideband ranging and radar applications

What you will do

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios are ideally suited for time-of-flight based distance estimation for applications in consumer and industrial applications. The wide spectrum bandwidth allows use of narrow pulses that facilitate very accurate time measurement. However, wide-scale adoption of UWB radios is to a large extent limited by cost and power consumption of existing solutions.

UWB is getting into high-end smartphones (Apple and Samsung), and it is expected that more vendors will follow. Besides working on the above power consumption challenge, this project also focusses on enabling radar scanning functionality with UWB ICs.

In this project, you will attempt to address these challenges by developing the circuits for a next-generation low-power UWB receiver for ranging and radar applications. You will begin the project with a survey of state-of-the-art approaches for UWB receivers followed by design of architecture and circuits that can reduce the power consumption without sacrificing sensitivity. Depending on the performance and quality of the researched solutions, a tapeout in an advanced semiconductor technology node as well as publication in a reputed conference or journal is possible.

Your Tasks Involve:

• Literature survey the state-of-the-art UWB receiver with focus on ranging and radar.
• Identify promising techniques for improving power dissipation and performance of UWB receivers.
• Model the system in MATLAB or Python.
• Schematic and layout of the circuits in Cadence environment.
• Tape-out and measurement of the chip (if time permits) 

What we do for you

You will be working on cutting-edge research on a topic that is very relevant to both academic research and industrial applications. To help you in this journey, we offer a flexible environment where you can be the leader of your own research while at the same time have support of experts from IC design as well signal processing and systems design to complete your tasks. You will also have support for tapeout and measurement of the chip if the performance of the design is promising. As part of IoT team in IMEC-Netherlands you will have opportunities to learn from the some of the best minds in analog and digital circuits as well as other research domains.

Who you are

• You are a Msc/Bsc student in Electronics Engineering.
• You are available for a period of 9 to 12 months.
• You have knowledge of RF/analog and mixed-signal circuit design – preferably with project experience.
• You have affinity for signal processing.
• You are familiar with Cadence design environment or similar CAD tools.
• You are familiar with system-modelling in MATLAB or Python.
• You are entitled to do an internship in the Netherlands.
• You are self-starter and able to work independently.
• Good written and verbal English skills.

Interested

Click on ‘apply’ to submit your application. You will then be redirected to e-recruiting.

Please be advised that non-EU/EEA country students that are studying outside of the Netherlands, need to have a work-permit to be able to do an internship in the Netherlands.