UNIC

People

Yahya Tousi

Ph.D., Cornell University

Email: ym225(at)cornell.edu

Research Interests

I am interested in the general area of high performance integrated circuits. My research employs several elements in electromagnetics, applied physics, and mathematics to push the envelope of electronic systems in terms of their frequency of operation, performance and computational power. 
My research interests and contributions fall into the following areas:

Awards and Honors

Selected Publications




Research Highlights

Terahertz Radiation: A Scalable Approach

Can we use integrated circuits to generate and radiate meaningful power levels for terahertz applications? Inspired by the synchronization of oscillating networks I present a terahertz phased array radiator with an inherently scalable architecture. The measured EIRP of 50mW at 350GHz is by far the highest radiated power on any semiconductor technology (ISSCC '14).

High-Power Tunable Terahertz Signal Generation

How can we generate high output power from a harmonic oscillator above fmax and maintain our control on the center frequency? I introduce a new paradigm for VCO design that is based on a network of delay-coupled oscillators. In this structure the oscillator resonator is not loaded by lossy varactors. Instead, we control the frequency by manipulating the coupling dynamics. The measured prototype demonstrates an output power of 0.76mW at 292GHz and a tuning range of 4.5%. This chip presents the first high-power tunable source in sub-mm-wave frequencies. (ISSCC '12, PRL'12, JSSC'12).

Ultra-Fast Analog Signal Processing

We propose an ultra-fast signal processing scheme based on wave propagation in a passive network. In this technique the analog signal controls the interference pattern of the 2-dimenational lattice which is then detected and quantized. Based on this concept we design a 20GS/s quantizer which is the fastest single channel quantizer on silicon (MTT '10).

Delay-Line Based Data Conversion

There is a need for low-power scalable data converters for digital technologies. I use the concept of time-to-digital conversion and present a  high-speed analog-to-digital convertor. Because the time-based structure avoids sensitive analog blocks it is highly suitable for digital technologies. The measured 4-bit ADC consumes only 2mW at 1.2GS/s. This mostly-digital design occupies less than 0.01mm2 of active area. (JSSC '11, TCAS-II '09).

Featured Articles


Physics World: New tuner could bring terahertz to the masses

Cornell Chronicle: Solid State devices could scan for cancer

New way to generate terahertz radiation

Architecture Cracks Terahertz Power Generation And Tuning

Yahya Tousi receives 2012 SSCS Pre-Doctoral Achievement Award

Cornell ECE PhD student Yahya Tousi receives 2011 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Graduate Fellowship

Chip Gallery


High Power Scalable Terahertz Phased Array 

(ISSCC 2014)
















CMOS Terahertz High-Power Tunable Signal Source

(ISSCC 2012)



 Multi-Channel Delay-Line Based Data Converter

(JSSC 2011)



Delay-Line Based Analog-to-Digital Converter

(TCAS-II 2009)