KS of Princeton University, USA

Silicon-based Terahertz systems is a field that is only about a decade old. In this time, we have seen a phenomenal growth of silicon systems operating at THz frequencies for a wide range of applications in sensing, imaging and communication. It can be argued that both the ‘THz gap’ and the ‘technology and applications gap’ is closing in meaningful ways in the THz range. Technologies beyond 100 GHz focusing on sensing, imaging and wireless back-haul links are getting attractive as we enter into a new area of highly dense network of autonomous systems requiring ultra-high speed and reliable links.

In order to move beyond this inflection point as Moore’s law continue to slow, I will discuss why we need to look beyond the classical ‘device’-level metrics of efficiency and sensitivity of THz sources and detectors towards holistic ‘system’ level properties such as scalability and programmability. Such properties are critically important for applications in sensing and imaging, as evidenced across sensor fusion technologies across mmWave, IR and optical frequencies. The ultimate programmability in THz sources and sensors is one that can synthesize or receive THz fields with arbitrary configuration and spectrum. In this talk, I will highlight approaches that cut across electromagnetics, circuits, systems and signal processing, to allow for such reconfigurability in THz signal synthesis and sensing, yet realized with devices that are themselves not very efficient. Particularly, we will demonstrate approaches to THz CMOS sensors reconfigurable across the three field properties of spectrum (100 GHz-1000 GHz), beam pattern and polarization, programmable THz metasurfaces with CMOS tiling, and enabling dynamic spectrum shaping and physically secure sub-THz links. In the end, I will comment on what could be the major directions for the field in the coming decade.

Biography:

Kaushik Sengupta (M’12) received the B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in electronics and electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, India, both in 2007, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, in 2008 and 2012, respectively. In February 2013, he joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. During his undergraduate studies, he performed research at the University of Southern California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the summers of 2005 and 2006, where he was involved with nonlinear integrated systems for high-purity signal generation and low-power RF identification (RFID) tags, respectively. His research interests are in the areas of high-frequency ICs, electromagnetics, optics for various applications in sensing, imaging and high-speed communication.

Dr. Sengupta was the recipient of the IBM Ph.D. fellowship (2011–2012), the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society Predoctoral Achievement Award, the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Graduate Fellowship, and the Analog Devices Outstanding Student Designer Award (2011). He was also the recipient of the Prime Minister Gold Medal Award of IIT (2007), the Caltech Institute Fellowship, the Most Innovative Student Project Award of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (2007), and the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Undergraduate Fellowship (2006). He was the corecipient of IEEE RFIC Symposium Best Student Paper Award in 2012.

Email:

Address:Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, B216 Engineering Quadrangle, Princeton University, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States, 08540