SpecEES: Spectrum and Energy Efficient Silicon Photonic Millimeter-wave Remote Antenna Units for Radio over Fiber Application

具有频率捷变、节能的毫米波远程天线单元（RAU）的光纤无线电（RoF）分布式天线系统对于许多应用是必不可少的。它们可以覆盖室内无线通信的死区。它们可以增加系统容量和吞吐量，并提高高数据速率第五代（5G）蜂窝通信的频谱效率。将探索硅RF光子学和互补金属氧化物半导体（CMOS）电子技术，以实现具有小形状因子的频谱和能量效率的毫米波RAU。这些芯片级硅光子宽带毫米波RAU用于RoF分布式天线系统的成功演示，同时具有频率捷变和能量效率，将彻底改变5G无线蜂窝通信和室内无线通信的未来（例如，会议中心、机场、酒店、购物中心、办公室和家庭），并为半导体行业提供更多机会。除了上述技术影响外，拟议项目还促进外联活动，以增加代表性不足群体的学生对科学和工程的参与，包括每年为男女同校和女高中生举办为期一周的夏令营。该项目的研究和教育成果将传播到学术界、工业界和政府部门。该项目将频谱效率作为其首要目标，能源效率作为其次要目标。该项目旨在开发新型芯片级硅光子宽带毫米波前端架构，作为RoF分布式天线系统的频谱和节能RAU，使用混合绝缘体上硅（SOI）光子和CMOS芯片，以及发射/接收（TX/RX）全双工（FD）天线单元。通过采用可重构硅RF光子滤波器和基于TX/RX天线和CMOS毫米波集成电路的FD前端，实现了频率捷变、抗干扰能力和频谱效率。同时，通过适当选择硅光子技术、RF光子滤波器拓扑和FD前端架构来解决能效问题。拟议的研究任务是：1）毫米波硅光子学-CMOS频率捷变、能量高效RAU的架构定义和性能分析，2）开发能够电气重新配置的新型硅光子学电路以及相关算法和硬件以提供频率捷变和能量效率，3）实现和测试CMOS原型，其包括必要的频率捷变，具有光子电路调谐硬件的高能效毫米波集成前端沿着，以及4）硅光子、CMOS芯片和TX/RX天线的混合集成以及整个RAU的测试。硅光子学的出现使集成RF光子带通和陷波滤波器的潜力成为可能，这些滤波器具有很强的频率捷变性和毫米波干扰消除能力，并且具有小尺寸RAU的低功耗。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并且通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Radio-over-fiber (RoF) distributed antenna systems with frequency agile, energy efficient mm-wave remote antenna units (RAUs) are essential for many applications. They can cover dead zones of indoor wireless communications. They can increase system capacity and throughput, and enhance spectral efficiency for high data rate fifth-generation (5G) cellular communications. Silicon RF photonics and Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) electronics technologies will be explored to implement both spectral- and energy-efficient mm-wave RAUs with small form factors. A successful demonstration of these chip-scale silicon photonics wideband mm-wave RAUs for RoF distributed antenna systems with simultaneous frequency agility and energy efficiency will revolutionize the future of 5G wireless cellular communications and indoor wireless communications (e.g., conference centers, airports, hotels, shopping malls, offices, and homes), and provide further opportunities for the semiconductor industry. Besides the aforementioned technical impacts, the proposed project also promotes outreach activities to increase participation of students from underrepresented groups in science and engineering, including annual one-week summer camps for co-ed and female high school students. The research and educational results of this work will be disseminated to the academic, industrial, and government sectors.This project addresses spectral efficiency as its primary goal and energy efficiency as its secondary goal. This project intends to develop novel chip-scale silicon photonics wideband mm-wave front-end architectures as both spectral and energy efficient RAUs for RoF distributed antenna systems using hybrid Silicon on Insulator (SOI) photonics and CMOS chips, and transmit/receive (TX/RX) full-duplex (FD) antenna units. Frequency agility, interference-resilience and spectral efficiency are achieved by employing reconfigurable silicon RF photonics filters and a FD front-end based on TX/RX antennas and CMOS mm-wave integrated circuits. At the same time, energy efficiency is addressed by the proper choice of silicon photonics technology, RF photonics filter topology, and FD front-end architecture. The proposed research tasks are: 1) architecture definition and performance analysis of a mm-wave silicon photonics-CMOS frequency-agile, energy-efficient RAU, 2) development of novel silicon photonics circuits capable of electrical reconfiguration, and relevant algorithms and hardware to provide frequency agility and energy efficiency, 3) implementation and testing of CMOS prototypes which include the necessary frequency-agile, energy-efficient mm-wave integrated front-end along with the photonics circuit tuning hardware, and 4) hybrid integration of silicon photonics, CMOS chips, and TX/RX antennas and testing of the entire RAU. The emergence of silicon photonics has enabled the potential of realizing integrated RF photonics bandpass and notch filters with strong frequency agility and interference cancellation at mm-wave and low power consumption for a small form factor RAU.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.