2020-2021 Capstone Project: Collaborative IC Design Using Augmented Reality

This year’s Capstone project will be conducted solely through on-line means due to on-going COVID-19 related physical distancing, unless the situation with COVID-19 changes so that in-person meetings are possible later.

While remote desktop environments and screen sharing while video conferencing over Zoom or Microsoft Teams will enable us to collaborate, a more fluid collaborative environment should be possible using XR technologies (XR is either augmented reality or virtual reality).

A part of the project will be the use of XR communications to facilitate group meetings, design collaboration, and design reviews. If there are students in the group primarily interested in augmented reality or virtual reality technologies, development/use of XR technologies (hardware and/or software) can be the focus of the project for those students.

This Capstone project will therefore discover the following for small engineering teams, academic research groups, and lab groups of students seeking a more fluid on-line collaboration and educational environment:

·      Appropriate types of end-user hardware (e.g. AR, VR, form factor);

·      Requirements for networking infrastructure (e.g. bandwidth, latency);

·      Available software versus what is required for streamlining the user experience;

·      Server-side requirements.

I found a YouTube video that shows an AR interface similar to what I was thinking about when drafting this project description:

 

Otherwise, the project involves analog, digital, or mixed-signal integrated circuit design. Cadence tools will be used (Analog Design Environment, Composer, Virtuoso, etc.) along with Synopsys tools (e.g. Design compiler). 

Specific IC design projects that may be of interest:

• RFIC direct down conversion receiver using non-coherent local oscillators. This type of receiver avoids DC offsets found in "traditional" direct conversion receivers by using a spread spectrum LO. Students will design the various receiver building blocks including LNA, mixers, LO generator, AGC, phase detectors, and filters.
• Wideband tunable bandpass filter based on active inductors. The team will design and implement a high-Q bandpass filter that uses a "simulated" or "virtual" inductor comprised of a gyrator. This type of circuit is useful for software defined radio applications.
• Low-power SAR ADC using non-binary weighted capacitor arrays. This is a type of ADC that can achieve high resolution at low power. This project involves mixed-signal circuit design and would be good for students interested in a career designing ICs for biomedical applications.
• Machine Intelligence accelerator. This project will create an IC to accelerate the training of neural networks. Specifically, the implementation of CRAM (Computational RAM) will be a focus point for the project. This type of memory can operate on its own contents, without needing to send data over a bus where it is processed elsewhere and then returned to the memory.

Other IC design project suggestions will certainly be considered if I think I could supervise the project to a successful completion.