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Ultra-high Speed Wireless Networks

60GHz Wireless ChipImagine downloading a HD DVD onto your PDA at a public kiosk in seconds, taking it home and playing it directly onto your HD TV.

 

As growing numbers of electronic devices find their way into the average home, they're bringing with them an annoying companion: rats-nests of connector cables.

Short-range wireless technologies have long been seen as a solution, however most cannot deliver the multi-gigabit speeds needed to transmit high-quality video signals.  Those that can have been prohibitively expensive.

NICTA's research team has overcome both these challenges.  It has successfully developed a 60 GHz wireless transmission module housed on a single silicon chip.  Once high volume produciton begins, low cost chips will be produced.

Future wireless communication networks need to be self-configuring, self-organising, self-managing and secure.

NICTA’s Ultra-High Speed Wireless Project (formerly known as GiFi) is developing the next generation of wireless networks and received the Innovation Excellence Award at the 2009 Innovic Next Big Thing Awards. 

 




Why wireless networks?
How will this affect me?



What Have We Achieved?

The Ultra-High Speed Wireless Networks team has succeeded in taking complex 60 GHZ transmission technology and and shrinking it to the point where it can be built on a single silicon chip.

Our expertise means that this technology is now at the point where it can have a dramatic impact on the way consumer electronic devices are used in the home.

  •  World’s first transceiver integrated on a single chip operating at 60GHz on the CMOS (complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) process - February 2008
  • Public Demonstration of Wireless Video transmission over 60 GHz utilising the NICTA developed 130 nm  transceiver - February 2009
  • Byron Wicks awarded 2009 Fulbright Victoria Scholarship - March 2009
  • Best Student Paper - Byron Wicks, Chien Ta, Stan Skafidas, Rob Evans & Iven Mareels - 2008 International Conference on Microwave and Millimetre Wave Technology (ICMMT) held in Nanjing  - A 60 GHz power Amplifier and Transmit/recieve Switch for Integrated CMOS Wireless Transceivers
  • Best Student Paper Finalist - Jerry Liu, Stan Skafidas and Rob Evans - 2008 International Conference on Microwave and Millimetre Wave Technology (ICMMT) held in Nanjing - A 60 GHz VCO with 6 GHz Tuning Range in 130 nm Bulk CMOS
  • Merit Award, Research & Development Category, 2007 Australian Information Industry Association iAwards
  • Project Leader, Stan Skafidas named as one of The Age (Melbourne) Magazine Top 100 people for 2008
  • Byron Wicks, coauthor with NICTA's Khusro Saleem and the University of Melbourne's Kithsiri Dassanayake of the 2008 Eckermann-TJA Prize: Alcatel-Lucent Broadband Environmental Challenge joint winning paper Broadband and the Sustainable Use of Water Resources, Telecommunications Journal of Australia, February 2009. 
  • Invited paper at the 2007 IEEE International Workshop on Radio-Frequency Integration Technology (RFIT 2007) held in Shanghai.  Issues in the Implementation of a 60 GHz Transceiver on CMOS by B Yang, Y Mo, K Wang, B Wicks, C Ta, F Zhang, Z Liu, G Felic, P Nadagouda, T Walsh & S Skafidas

View Our Research Publication List

 

The future60GHz Wireless Project Team from the ATP Research Lab60GHz Wireless Project Team from the Victoria Research Lab

NICTA is currently looking for partners interested in commercialising its 60 GHz chips.

This technology has the potential to change the way consumers use their in-home electronic devices.

With growing consumer adoption of high-definition television, the anticipated worldwide market for this technology is vast


Who are we working with?

Our industry collaborators include IBM, Synopsys, Cadence, Anritsu, Agilent Technologies, Ansoft, Coventor and SUSS MicroTec

IBM provides support to the 60GHz project by providing foundry access to small geometry (65nm and below) CMOS processes

Cadence and Synopsys support the project by providing design tools that enable the design of high frequency and low power CMOS components

 

Who Are We?

Stan Skafidas (project leader), Tim Walsh, Praveen Nadagouda, Gordana Felic, Byron Wicks, Chien Ta Minh, Yang Bo, Aleck Liu, Frank Zhang, Tom Wang, Jerry Liu, Yuan Mo, Rob Evans,William Shieh,Charles Thomas, Rami Mukhtar,Mark Bickerstaff, Ben Widdup, Koen van de Beld, John Li, Jeff Li

 

The research team are world leaders in developing next generation millimetre wave systems