Digital Calibration Method for High Resolution in Analog/RF Designs

ii To my dear wife, Liang iii Acknowledgments First, I would like to thank my advisor Professor Larry Pileggi for all his support and continuous guidance throughout the past five years. He opened up a wide variety of research topics that I can explore during my early years at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and helped me find my research path that eventually leads to this dissertation. Second, I would like to thank my co-advisor Professor Jeff Weldon. It was him who guided me to the RF circuit design in this dissertation, during which I gradually came up with the proposed digital calibration method. Next, I would like to thank the rest of my dissertation committee members. Professor Jeyanandh Paramesh gave the lectures of the most valuable class to me at CMU, which was radio frequency integrated circuits design. This class shaped my research interests as well as my future career path. Dr. Gokce Keskin proposed the original design method on which my new method was based. His work inspired me during my graduate study and I became an early adopter of his proposed design method in one of my early chip design. I would also like to thank my fellow lab members. Kaushik Vaidyanathan has patiently taught me, an analog circuit designer, how to do proper semi-custom digital circuit design. As a senior student to me, his advices also helped me to go through graduate student life as well as to find my career path. Ph.D. program at the same year as I did. I appreciate all the collaborations we have in classes as well as in research projects with the thoughtful discussions and sincere advices. I would also like to thank the rest of the current and past lab members in Professor Pileggi's group who overlapped with me: treasure the years that we spent together at CMU. Last but not least, I would like to thank my parents. They have raised me as an individual that desires for knowledge and truth. I will be forever grateful for all the things they taught me and the characters they gave me. Finally, I would like to give my deepest thanks to my beloved wife Liang Tang, although words cannot describe the magnitude of my gratitude here. It was a small probability event that we met each other at Peking University and then came to CMU together as graduate students. I cannot …