A Flexible vision for RF ICs

Flexible high-speed systems and architectures have promising and exciting applications at the intersection of communications, imaging, medicine and deployable arrays. The flexibility is expressed in terms of electrical reconfigurability, flexible circuit board materials, and lightweight, bendy interconnects between remote array elements. In this talk I will present my work at Caltech’s High-speed and holistic IC laboratory in developing such systems. Two key elements in our flexible schemes are the utilization of highly functional RFICs to minimize rigid component count, and a holistic, modular design approach which is crucial to future size scaling. Through the talk I will present several exemplary architectures for space, power transfer, communication and sensing applications, and will discuss the high-level considerations, implementation, challenges, and potential uses of such systems.