The project ‘Future Wireless Interfaces: Technology and Circuit exploration (FWITEC)’ is a collaboration between the Electrical Engineering department of Eindhoven University of Technology and NXP. Future high-data rate wireless interfaces between devices are expected to become highly flexible solutions for industry and consumers. This type of application requires highly efficient data transmission, with stringent requirements on the energy per bit.

The FWITEC project will research system architectures for this new application domain, develop new high speed III-V semiconductor electronic technologies and implement critical circuit building blocks for the high frequency, high bandwidth communication system.

The project consists of a combined approach on systems level, technology level and circuit implementation level. A system level analysis will be performed to derive possible system architectures. On the technology level, a new high speed III-V electronic semiconductor technology will be explored to enable energy efficient circuit designs in the 300 GHz frequency range.

The circuit design will focus on critical blocks at (sub-)millimeter wave frequencies of the transmitter and receiver chain. The circuit design will also analyze new avenues for machine-learning enhanced data converters and explore their applicability for high-data rate low-power communication systems. The project will strive to disseminate knowledge to the semiconductor network and to generate knowledge and IP for future valorization opportunities.