IEM Seminar Series: Inverse Design of Nonintuitive Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits
Abstract
Radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) are foundational to modern wireless systems, enabling communication and sensing across commercial and defense applications. Yet despite decades of advances in theory and design tools, RFIC design remains largely manual and time-consuming. Designers depend on experience-driven heuristics and tacit, iterative co-optimization of active devices, such as transistors, and passive structures, such as spirals, capacitors, and transmission lines. The reliance on templated components also severely restricts the design space that can be explored, limiting both performance and innovation.
This talk presents a fundamentally different paradigm for RFIC design based on inverse design techniques. The proposed framework autonomously synthesizes high-performance, tapeout-ready RFICs directly at the layout level with minimal human intervention, by algorithmically codesigning active and passive components.
Furthermore, by moving beyond fixed template-based methodologies, the framework unlocks vast, nonintuitive design spaces inaccessible to conventional workflows, often producing layouts that significantly outperform traditional designs. Demonstrations across diverse circuit classes and frequency regimes, from low-GHz time-varying filters to W-band linear and nonlinear power amplifiers, highlight the power and generality of this approach.
Biography
Vinay Chenna received a B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, India, in 2019. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). His current research focuses on leveraging computational techniques and optimization algorithms to synthesize high-performance, beyond-human RF and mm-Wave integrated circuits autonomously.
Mr. Chenna was a recipient of the USC Annenberg Fellowship in 2019 and the USC IUSSTF-Viterbi summer research award in 2018. He won the 2025 Best Student Paper Award - 1st Place at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, the 2026 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award, the 2026 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) graduate student fellowship, and the 2026 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Tom Brazil Prize.
Radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) are foundational to modern wireless systems, enabling communication and sensing across commercial and defense applications. Yet despite decades of advances in theory and design tools, RFIC design remains largely manual and time-consuming. Designers depend on experience-driven heuristics and tacit, iterative co-optimization of active devices, such as transistors, and passive structures, such as spirals, capacitors, and transmission lines. The reliance on templated components also severely restricts the design space that can be explored, limiting both performance and innovation.
This talk presents a fundamentally different paradigm for RFIC design based on inverse design techniques. The proposed framework autonomously synthesizes high-performance, tapeout-ready RFICs directly at the layout level with minimal human intervention, by algorithmically codesigning active and passive components.
Furthermore, by moving beyond fixed template-based methodologies, the framework unlocks vast, nonintuitive design spaces inaccessible to conventional workflows, often producing layouts that significantly outperform traditional designs. Demonstrations across diverse circuit classes and frequency regimes, from low-GHz time-varying filters to W-band linear and nonlinear power amplifiers, highlight the power and generality of this approach.
Biography
Vinay Chenna received a B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, India, in 2019. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). His current research focuses on leveraging computational techniques and optimization algorithms to synthesize high-performance, beyond-human RF and mm-Wave integrated circuits autonomously.
Mr. Chenna was a recipient of the USC Annenberg Fellowship in 2019 and the USC IUSSTF-Viterbi summer research award in 2018. He won the 2025 Best Student Paper Award - 1st Place at the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, the 2026 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (SSCS) Predoctoral Achievement Award, the 2026 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) graduate student fellowship, and the 2026 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Tom Brazil Prize.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Suzanne Manné