Research Programs
The current focus of Prof Bogatin's research activities is in four areas related to signal integrity (SI), power integrity (PI), electromagnetic compliance (EMC) and project-based hands-on electronics education for undergraduates.
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the following companies:
- Ansys
- Averatek
- AVX Corp
- GE Healthcare
- Keysight
- Mentor Graphics
- Mission Zero
- Rogers Corp
- Teledyne LeCroy
Current students involved in our research programs
- Aditya Rao (PhD student)
- Ameya Ramadurgakar (PhD student)
- Vivek Kamble (MS student)
- Neha Pazare (MS student)
Current research projects, in collaboration with Prof Piket-May and students:
Developing very low cost technology solutions to SI, PI or EMI problems.
- Optimzing low cost ($0.35) SMA launches to 2-layer and 4-layer circuit board transmission lines
- Designing and building a 5 Gbps PRBS source for $5
- Using a $60 square wave source to measure the insitu bandwidth of scopes, cables, probes and fixtures
- Integrating low cost, readily available fast sources on circuit boards
- GE Healthcare: developing a simple, low-cost method to measure the Dk and dielectric thickness of a PCB laminate layer
- AVX: evaluating capacitor measurement and modeling in conjunction with slammer circuits and snubber circuits to demonstrate the value of ESR in damplng PDN resonances
- Measuring the output impedance of a VRM with a capacitively coupled $600 VNWA network analyzer under different DC load conditions using external eload current sink.
- Turning the $600 VNA with a bias Tee connection to measure the dynamic spectroscopy of artifical dielectrics using an external I-V curve tracer software defined instrument.
- Using a rationalized polynomial model of S-parameters to get around the bandwidth limitations from Gibbs ringing
- Using circuit board design and component selection to increase the frequency at which a low-pass LC filter transitions to a high pass filter to reduce high frequency noise in SMPS devices
- Evaluating the limitations of conductive ink interconnects from 1 Hz to 40 GHz applications
- Building template circuits in QUCS to hack circuit models from measured TDR impedance profiles
- Investigating in which situations is it important to include a measured S-parameter at DC in the recreated eye diagram of an interconnect
Developing hands on labs of pathological and best mesurement, design and simulation practices for SI/PI/EMC examples
- Keysight: developing application notes using ADS to illustrate the properties of signals in the time and freuqency domain, and interconnects, simulated and measured
- Mentor Graphics: developing various hands-on lab exercises using Hyperlynx to illustrate important SI/PI/EMC principles
- Ansys: developing various hands-on lab exercises using Electronic Desktop Student Version to illustrate important SI/PI/EMC principles
- Teledyne LeCroy: developing various webinars illustrating best measurement practices with real time scopes, TDR and VNA instruments
- An analysis of the dangers of copper pour on signal layers
- An analysis of the non-TEM disperion behaviors in microstrips and their cross section geometry, correlated between measurement-EM simulation and rules of thumb.
- Building a discrete LC ladder circuit to demonstration the bandwidth limitations of transmission line models
- Hands on labs for the ECEN 5730 Practical PCB course
- Hands on labs for the ECEN 5013 Advanced PCB course
- Developing new content for a course on Hacking Interconnects: High bandwidth models of interconnects from measurement and simulation
Developing best practices for improving measurement-simulation correlation in interconnections and circuits from 1 Hz to 40 GHz.
- Dk, Df measurement methods using test vehicles, S-parameters and hacking models
- Extracting the Thevenin model of a TX using the VRM characterizer instrument droid
- Measuring the rise and fall times of TX sources with real time scopes
- Using TDR measurements into a RX to hack the input capacitance
- Component characterization of capacitors, inductors, resistors using a $600 VNWA instrument and hacking a model
- Exploring the use of the Digilent AD2 and CircuitLab simulator for simple circuit measurement and analysis
- Exploring the use of the a Keysight 4024 scope and Keysight ADS for circuit measurement and simulation
- Measuring and modeling transient response of microcontroller output signals with 10x probes
- Characterizing commonly used components such as op amps, transistors, MOSFETs, functional circuits and validating datasheet specs
Low-cost, Rapid Prototyping of Electronic Circuits Initiative (see the description here)
Developing very low-cost, high-performance software defined instruments
These are microcontroller based, inteligent data acquisition systems with outputs to measure, analyze and control physical or electronic systems. They emphasize very low cost, simple to implement, high performance and high accurate automated systems. Examples of some specific projects are:
- Developing an electronic eNose for green house gases (GHG) such as CO2, using sensors like these.
- An automated I-V curve tracer and model fitter
- An automated Thevenin voltage and resistance characterizer
- An automated three terminal curve tracer
- An insitu current sensor for in-rush current and steady state current monitoring of any circuit
- A micro ohm meter
- A very low noise, noise-spectrometer
- An automated battery tester for charging and discharching studies with integrated dynamic impedance spectrometer
- An automated lifetime tester for LEDs under accerated current stressing or temperature stressing
- A precision frequency meter using phase interpolation to automatically plot the Allan Variance of a frequency source
- A precision frequency synthesized source based on an atomic clock standard
- A dynamic impedance analyzer which applies a large DC bias and measures the small signal complex impedance with a sine wave to get the non-linear I-V curve and do impedance spectroscopy at non-linear parts of the curve. Apply this to test artifical dielectrics, like conductive particles in dielectrics, conductive inks, and fit quantum tunneling models.
- Ultra low noise audio detector for low level acoustic emissions from materials or bugs
- A microcolorimetry tester using heat capacity changes of a hot wire with a ramped temperature
- Coincidence detector for pulses or edges to within 1 nsec
- High precision, high accuracy, low noise, low drift, low frequency voltmeter
- A high precision, high accuracy scale to measure microgram weight changes posted to a website with dashboard
- A low frequency (1 Hz to 10 MHz) impedance and Bode analyzer using a square wave and a fast ADC
- A low frequency (1 Hz to 10 MHz) impedance and Bode analyzer using a DDS sine wave source and a fast ADC
- A low frequency impedance analyzer for very high impedances to measure insulators or artifical dielectrics using a DDS sine wave source
- An electrometer capable of measuring fA currents to measure the leakage current in capacitors or ions in air
- Transient analyzer to measure dielectric absoption in capacitors
- An electro mechanical spectrometer for 1, 2 and 3D structures
- An array of every gas sensors for smell fingerprint detection
- An ultra sensitive metal detector
- An ultra sensitive magnetometer using proton spin free induction decay for earth's magnetic field measurements
- An ultra sensitive acceleratometer for seismic detection with time synchonization and geotagging with web posting
- An ultra sensitive tilt meter for earth tide measurements
- An ultra sensitive pendulum period sensor using a servoed and driven pendulum phase locked to an atomic standard to measure small g changes
Exploring sensor options and sensor systems for
- atmospheric (air based) sensors, such as eNose
- water and liquid based sensors, such as water quality sensors
- earth sensors such as ionizing radiation, magnetic fields, earht tilt, ground vibrations, etc.
- biomedical/health sensing such as EKG, EEG, EMG, GSR, pulse oximetr, etc