Behzad Razavi, a prolific researcher, writer and educator whose seminal work on high-speed complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) circuits for communications technologies has helped change the field of circuit design, is being honored by IEEE with the 2012 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits. 

The award, sponsored by the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, recognizes Razavi for pioneering contributions to the design of high-speed CMOS communication circuits. The award will be presented on XX February 2012 at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, Calif.

Razavi’s goal for two decades has been to push the envelope of high-speed communication circuits, improving the speed of communication transceivers using standard CMOS technology. The new architectures, circuits and devices developed through his research have paved the way for many of today’s integrated wireless and wireline/fiber-optic systems. Also a prolific writer, Razavi has produced award-winning and highly cited reference papers and invaluable textbooks that have greatly influenced the field of CMOS circuit design.

Razavi’s work in the area of wireless transceivers pioneered the concept that innovations at the architecture level can greatly relax the design at the circuit level. He was an early proponent of direct conversion for wireless transceivers, which is widely used in many wireless systems including cellular phone handsets. With his students at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Razavi explored new architectures for radio-frequency (RF) applications from 900 MHz to 60 GHz, introducing, for example, “synthesizer-friendly” transceivers. These architectures have substantially simplified the design of their constituent oscillators and frequency dividers, leading to 60-GHz receivers and transmitters that consume the lowest reported power levels.

Razavi is also known for applying RF concepts to wireline/fiber-optic circuits. Razavi and his UCLA students were the first to demonstrate 10-Gb/s (in 2001) and 40-Gb/s (in 2003) clock and data recovery circuits, laser drivers and equalizers using CMOS technologies. This led to designing higher-speed wireline transceivers using CMOS, with the benefit of lower manufacturing costs.

Razavi has written five text books and edited two others, contributing to the education of students and engineers around the world. His “Design of Analog CMOS Circuits” (McGraw-Hill, 2001) has been adopted by hundreds of universities, translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean and won the McGraw Hill First-Edition of the Year Award in 2001. In 2003, Razavi was named one of the top 10 authors in the 50-year history of the ISSCC for his many influential and award-winning papers.

An IEEE Fellow, Razavi’s honors include the TRW Innovative Teaching Award (1997); Lockheed Martin Excellence in Teaching Award (2006); the UCLA Faculty Senate Teaching Award (2007); Best Paper Awards at the IEEE ISSCC, Eurpoean Solid-State Circuits Conference and IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference; and he is a two-time recipient of the Beatrice Winner Award for Editorial Excellence (1994, 2001) from the ISSCC. Razavi received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, and his master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Calif. Razavi is currently a professor with the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has taught since 1996.

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