IC and System Design and Test

The research activities of the IC and System Design and Test group are concerned with high-performance digital VLSI design. Under the general supervision of Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Fichtner, most of the actual workload is being carried by ten or so PhD candidates guided by Dr. Norbert Felber in conjunction with Prof. Dr. Hubert Kaeslin ( DZ ⁽¹⁾). Graduate students also contribute to research with term and master theses wherever possible.

Research focuses on problems from modern telecommunications including adaptive antennas, digital modulation schemes, data compression, forward error correction, and cryptographic security. Digital processing of speech, audio, image, video, and multimedia signals are other applications of prime interest. Various techniques are being put to service to provide the silicon resources needed for such applications. These include dedicated VLSI architectures, special-purpose arithmetic units, application-specific instruction set processors (ASIP), and parametrized virtual components.

Special areas of competence include VLSI design and test methodologies, architecture and circuit design for high-performance and low-power, architectural concepts and clocking disciplines that favor reuse, VHDL synthesis, design of VHDL testbenches for highly parametrized components, and test methodologies for forthcoming CMOS technologies.

The majority of projects are being carried out in collaboration with industrial partners and benefit from financial support by national funding agencies. Research is driven by real-world problems and applications but occurs at an academic level. A typical example of a multi-year project is going to be presented next. The most important result from this joint project with Siemens Schweiz AG is an innovative telecommunication unit (add-drop multiplexer) that provides up to 63 telecom customers with fast, highly available data links. Another example is the development of a compact high-resolution single-CCD video camera that has been developed in collaboration with the ETH Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Volpi AG.