The activities of the microelectronics, electromagnetics and photonics research (MEP) group are directed toward a wide range of topics including design, modelling, and testing of devices and systems for communication systems, novel polymer semiconductor and photoconductor materials for flexible electronics, chemical and biological sensors, assessing the performance of optical fiber transmission systems and developing techniques for mitigating transmission impairments, and the design and implementation of optical sensor systems and sub-systems for various industrial applications.
About our research
The group has a strong focus on the design of high-speed electronics, with three members working in this area. Current high-speed electronics areas include antennas, operational transconductance amplifiers (OTAs), high data-rate modulators, low-temperature ceramics for high-Q materials, and low-cost CMOS for integrated antennas and photonic systems. These activities are competitive internationally, and in many cases are unique in Canada.
For example, the work on OTAs is unique within Canada for the high-frequency range that is targeted, and the work on low-temperature ceramics for monolithic 3-D ceramic circuits on ICs is the first in the world. The recently established ‘Organic Semiconductor Laboratory’ offers unique interdisciplinary research avenues and focuses strongly on design and implementation of novel organic-transistors, soft-wearable electronic devices, bioelectronic sensors and transducers. Two members work on photonic systems.
Much of the work is focused on spectrally efficient data transmission systems at bit rates of 100 Gb/s and above for short- to long-reach applications. Current activities include signal processing to compensate the waveform distortion that can occur in high symbol rate transceivers and the adverse effects of fiber nonlinearities. Work is also ongoing to integrate optical sensing technology systems into various industrial and medical applications via digital signal processing techniques.
The activities of the group are well supported by local fabrication and measurement capabilities including the Lightwave Systems Research Laboratory which has extensive facilities for device/component, sub-system and system testing, and Nanofabrication Kingston (NFK) for micro/nano fabrication and characterization requirements. The group also operates microwave measurement facilities for the characterization of electronics and antennas. Fabrication and measurement equipment in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy enables and complements the research in the group.
