CAREER: On-Chip Terahertz Electronic Frequency Combs

职业：片上太赫兹电子频率梳

• 批准号: 1653100
• 负责人: Ruonan Han
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-02-01 至 2022-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1653100&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Chip; Terahertz; Electronic; Frequency

Maintaining the exponential growth of electronic signal generation, sensing, and processing is essential to meet the new challenges of the upcoming era featuring ubiquitous sensors for healthcare, environment monitoring, autonomous vehicles/machines, etc. In particular, if the operating frequency of low-cost electronics can be extended into the terahertz (THz) regime, the unprecedented wide bandwidth will enable numerous new applications, such as non-ionizing imaging, molecular identification, high-resolution radar, and ultra-high-speed data link. Although in the past decade THz integrated circuits in silicon have improved remarkably in output power and efficiency, their reliance on high-quality-factor resonance makes the current THz sensors narrowband and fails to fully capitalize on the available broad spectrum for wide-range gas sensing and high-precision radar ranging. To break such a limit, this project investigates a new technique based on electronic THz frequency comb. Through parallel signal processing on the integrated circuit chip, gas sensor and imaging radar using the proposed technique will achieve significantly better spectral coverage and energy efficiency. This research effort will also be integrated with the principal investigator's educational career goal of promoting highly-interdisciplinary studies through the creation of new courses and engaging underrepresented and K-12 students through MIT's outreach programs.The objective of this proposal is to leverage the integration capability of the silicon semiconductor fabrication process and use THz frequency comb technique to distribute the signal-sensing load to an array of narrowband, precisely-controlled THz circuit units. It maintains high energy efficiency while covering a wide bandwidth in a scalable fashion. Sensors based on two types of THz frequency comb will be investigated under this program. First, a rotational-mode molecular sensor will be demonstrated using an evenly distributed frequency comb. The frequency comb will seamlessly cover more than 100 GHz of bandwidth and increase the spectral scanning speed of chip-scale THz spectrometer by a factor of 200. Through an on-chip frequency calibration technique, the spectrometer will scan the frequency spectrum with one-part-per-billion level frequency precision. Second, an imaging radar will be demonstrated using a non-uniform comb and compressive sensing. By quantizing the target distance with a set of nonlinearly distributed wavelengths and by using an error-correction algorithm, the radar can operate with low signal-to-noise ratio and low power consumption. The THz comb radar will also be integrated with a low-cost sensor array in a quasi-optical configuration, so that real-time 3D imaging with electronic scanning and fine resolution can be realized. Through these comprehensive studies, the program will establish the advantages of parallelism in chip-scale wide-band signal sensing and processing.

保持电子信号生成、传感和处理的指数增长对于迎接即将到来的时代的新挑战至关重要，该时代的特点是医疗保健、环境监测、自动驾驶车辆/机器等领域无处不在的传感器。特别是，如果低工作频率成本电子产品可以扩展到太赫兹（THz）范围，前所未有的宽带宽将实现许多新应用，例如非电离成像、分子识别、高分辨率雷达和超高速数据链路。尽管在过去十年中，硅中的太赫兹集成电路在输出功率和效率方面有了显着提高，但它们对高质量因数谐振的依赖使得当前的太赫兹传感器窄带，并且无法充分利用可用的广谱进行宽范围气体传感以及高精度雷达测距。为了打破这一限制，该项目研究了一种基于电子太赫兹频率梳的新技术。通过集成电路芯片上的并行信号处理，使用该技术的气体传感器和成像雷达将实现更好的光谱覆盖范围和能源效率。这项研究工作还将与首席研究员的教育职业目标相结合，即通过创建新课程并通过麻省理工学院的外展计划吸引代表性不足的学生和 K-12 学生来促进高度跨学科的研究。该提案的目标是利用整合能力硅半导体制造工艺，并使用太赫兹频率梳技术将信号传感负载分配到窄带、精确控制的太赫兹电路单元阵列。它保持高能源效率，同时以可扩展的方式覆盖较宽的带宽。该计划将研究基于两种太赫兹频率梳的传感器。首先，将使用均匀分布的频率梳演示旋转模式分子传感器。频率梳将无缝覆盖超过100 GHz的带宽，并将芯片级太赫兹光谱仪的光谱扫描速度提高200倍。通过片上频率校准技术，光谱仪将单部分扫描频谱- 十亿级频率精度。其次，将使用非均匀梳和压缩传感来演示成像雷达。通过用一组非线性分布的波长量化目标距离并使用纠错算法，雷达可以低信噪比和低功耗运行。太赫兹梳状雷达还将与准光学配置中的低成本传感器阵列集成，从而可以实现电子扫描和高分辨率的实时3D成像。通过这些全面的研究，该计划将确立芯片级宽带信号传感和处理中并行性的优势。

项目成果

Energy-efficient terahertz electronics using multi-functional electromagnetism and high-parallelism architecture

采用多功能电磁学和高并行架构的节能太赫兹电子器件

• DOI: 10.1109/mwscas.2017.8053127
• 发表时间: 2017
• 期刊: IEEE International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS
• 作者: Hu, Zhi;Wang, Cheng;Han, Ruonan
• 通讯作者: Han, Ruonan

Heterodyne Sensing CMOS Array with High Density and Large Scale: A 240-GHz, 32-Unit Receiver Using A De-Centralized Architecture

高密度、大规模外差传感 CMOS 阵列：采用分散式架构的 240 GHz、32 单元接收器

• DOI: 10.1109/rfic.2018.8428843
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: 2018 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium (RFIC
• 作者: Hu, Zhi;Wang, Cheng;Han, Ruonan
• 通讯作者: Han, Ruonan

A 220-to-320-GHz FMCW Radar in 65-nm CMOS Using a Frequency-Comb Architecture

采用频率梳架构、采用 65 nm CMOS 的 220 至 320 GHz FMCW 雷达

• DOI: 10.1109/jssc.2020.3020291
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
• 影响因子: 5.4
• 作者: Yi, Xiang;Wang, Cheng;Chen, Xibi;Wang, Jinchen;Grajal, Jesus;Han, Ruonan
• 通讯作者: Han, Ruonan

An on-chip fully electronic molecular clock based on sub-terahertz rotational spectroscopy

• DOI: 10.1038/s41928-018-0102-4
• 发表时间: 2018-07
• 期刊: Nature Electronics
• 影响因子: 34.3
• 作者: Cheng Wang;Xiang Yi;James Mawdsley;Mina Kim;Zihan Wang;R. Han

A CMOS Molecular Clock Probing 231.061-GHz Rotational Line of OCS with Sub-PPB Long-Term Stability and 66-MW DC Power

具有亚 PPB 长期稳定性和 66 MW 直流功率的 CMOS 分子时钟探测 OCS 231.061 GHz 旋转线

• DOI: 10.1109/vlsic.2018.8502271
• 发表时间: 2018
• 期刊: 2018 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits
• 作者: Wang, Cheng;Yi, Xiang;Kim, Mina;Zhang, Yaqing;Han, Ruonan
• 通讯作者: Han, Ruonan