Kamil of IMEC and Ghent University

The relentless demand for multi-gigabit wireless communication and high-resolution sensing drives rapid innovation in D-band (110–170 GHz) systems. However, realizing efficient and scalable active phased arrays at these frequencies remains challenging due to high cost, interconnect losses, packaging parasitics, and heterogeneous integration constraints. This talk presents a holistic, system-level approach to low-loss D-band phased array integration that unifies circuit, antenna, and packaging co-design. Leveraging both silicon-based (CMOS, SiGe) and III–V integrated circuits, the approach emphasizes optimized beamformer and power amplifier architectures combined with low-cost 2D scalable, wide-angle scanning wideband antenna arrays implemented using low-cost PCB processes. Through electromagnetic co-optimization and advanced interconnect engineering, the framework achieves significant reduction in loss and improvement in overall system efficiency. Measured D-band results from prototype modules demonstrate wide-angle beam steering and data transmission rates up to 100 Gb/s. These results confirm the feasibility of steerable, high-capacity arrays suitable for both communication and sensing platforms.

Biography:

Kamil Yavuz Kapusuz (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Atilim University, Ankara, Turkey, in 2013, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Electromagnetics Group, Department of Information Technology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, in 2021.

Since 2022, he has been a Senior Researcher in Electromagnetics at IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, and since 2026, he has been a Professor at Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. From 2014 to 2016, he was a Senior Antenna Engineer at Remote Sensing Technologies, Ankara, Turkey. From 2021 to 2022, he was a Visiting Scientist at the IETR Laboratory, CNRS, Rennes, France. From 2021 to 2026, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. His research interests include the analysis and design of quasi-optical systems, leaky-wave antennas, near-field focusing techniques, in-body and on-body communication systems, active, reconfigurable, and unconventional millimeter-wave and sub-terahertz phased arrays, as well as electromagnetic modeling and optimization of 2.5-D and 3-D RF packaging architectures.

Dr. Kapusuz received the URSI Young Scientist Award at the 2021 URSI General Assembly.

Damla of Cornell University

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands offer solutions to an ever-increasing spectrum crowd, yet the allocation of upper-mid spectrum for cellular communications has forced closely spaced frequency channels with other use cases in the dense electromagnetic environment, such as satellite communication (SATCOM) systems, and commercial and airborne radars. This shared spectrum usage aggravates the ever-present interference problem, which underlines the inevitable need for RF/ mmWave receivers with high dynamic range, immune to strong in-band and out-of-band blockers in communication and radar systems, imposing strict linearity requirements. Recent work on N-path structures at <6 GHz frequencies has proven that passive mixer-first receivers can provide a compelling solution to meet these requirements. However, linearity suffers from CMOS device limitations when simultaneous wide bandwidth and high linearity are required, while duty-cycled LO pulse generation in conventional N-path passive mixers also comes at the expense of significant power consumption at higher frequencies. One potential solution to overcome this physical performance bottleneck is to employ intrinsically linear GaN HEMTs to build interference-robust mmWave receivers.

This talk presents the first successful demonstration of N-path mixing and a passive mixer-first receiver front-end ever reported in GaN process technology. The Ku-band, out-of-band (OOB) blocker-tolerant quadrature N-path downconverter prototype on GaN-on-SiC combines multiple novel design techniques: It employs quadrature LO generation and buffering, as well as a recently developed mixer topology that allows overlapping sinusoidal switching waveforms to minimize conversion loss. The presentation will provide an in-depth review of these innovative techniques to suppress image re-radiation and shunting losses in N-path mixer-first topology and to eliminate the power-hungry LO pulses. Additionally, custom design practices to realize this breakthrough work, such as on-chip passive design and integration strategies in the challenging 2-metal-layer stack-up in GaN technology and custom power-up cycle, will be discussed. The talk will conclude with further insights and an outlook on new approaches to extend the operation frequencies while preserving high dynamic range towards out-of-band blocker-tolerant, high-power-handling mmWave GaN receivers for the next-generation communication and sensing platforms.

Biography:

Damla Dimlioglu received the B.S. degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering with a minor in Solid-State Physics from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2012, and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Semiconductor Devices and Physics from the University of California, Davis, CA, in 2015. Her M.S. research focused on novel high-speed and low-power SAR ADC architectures based on time-to-digital conversion. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree at Cornell University, NY, focusing on Out-of-Band Interference-Tolerant mmWave Receivers on CMOS, SiGe, and GaN technologies for high-data-rate wireless communications and sensing. In 2023, she demonstrated the first GaN N-path passive mixer ever reported to date in a mixer-first downconverter prototype and presented it to the Director of NIST, who oversees the CHIPS Act under the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Before joining Cornell in 2020, she was an R&D mmWave IC design intern at Next Generation Radio Integration Lab at Intel Labs, OR, working on Nonlinear Distortions in mmWave Phased Array Transceivers. She worked on tunable PLLs at Analog Devices, CA (2015), high-speed optical modulator drivers at Bell Laboratories, NJ (2016), and bandwidth extension techniques for broadband amplifiers at Intel Labs, OR (2017).

Damla is a reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC), IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters (SSC-L), IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I (TCAS-I), IEEE Journal of Microwaves (JMW), IEEE Microwave Magazine, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Technology Letters (MWTL), and IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (T-MTT). She has been an editor for the IEEE Microwave Magazine since 2025. She serves as a TE on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Journal of Microwaves (JMW) for the technical tracks Microwave and mmWave Integrated Circuits and RF/Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing.

She has been a member of the MTT-S TC-14 Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits Committee and the IEEE International Microwave Symposium Technical Program Review Committee (IMS TPRC) since 2021. She also served on the 2023 IEEE IMS Early Career Paper Competition Review Committee. Since 2025, she has served on the technical review committees of the European Microwave Integrated Circuits (EuMIC), European Microwave Conference (EuMC), German Microwave Conference (GeMiC), IEEE Space, Aerospace and Defense (IEEE SPACE), IEEE Microwaves, Antennas, and Propagation (IEEE MAPCON), and IEEE BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (IEEE BCICTS) conferences. She is the TPC Co-chair for the 2026 IEEE Texas Symposium on Microwave and Wireless Circuits and Systems (IEEE MWCS).

Damla is the recipient of the 2024 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society Rising Stars Award.

She has been named one of the 2026 IEEE MTT-S Outstanding YP Lecturers in the global cohort of 8 newly selected speakers.