Asad Ali Abidi (born July 12, 1956) is a Pakistani-American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the ...

. He serves as a tenured

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professor ...

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

, and is the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at the

Lahore University of Management Sciences Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) () is a private research university, located in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. In 1983, Syed Babar Ali, a renowned businessman in Pakistan, recognized the shortage of qualified managers in the countr ...

(LUMS). He is best known for pioneering

RF CMOS RF CMOS is a metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit (IC) technology that integrates radio-frequency (RF), analog and digital electronics on a mixed-signal CMOS (complementary MOS) RF circuit chip. It is widely used in modern w ...

technology during the late 1980s to early 1990s. As of 2008, the radio transceivers in all

wireless networking A wireless network is a computer network that uses wireless data connections between network nodes. Wireless networking is a method by which homes, telecommunications networks and business installations avoid the costly process of introducing ...

devices and modern mobile phones are mass-produced as RF CMOS devices. Abidi received his B.S. from the

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a ...

followed by a M.S. and

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1981. He worked as an electrical engineer with

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

and in January 1985 joined

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

as a

tenured Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

academic. In 2007, he left for a three-year sabbatical to work as a founding dean of the engineering school at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and returned to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

in 2009. In 2017, he was named as the inaugural holder of the Abdus Salam Chair at LUMS. Abidi is a prominent academic and is a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

and

The World Academy of Sciences The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) is a merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting 1,000 scientists in some 70 countries. Its principal aim is to promote scientific capacity and excellence for sustainable deve ...

. He received the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits in 2008. In 2015,

UC, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...

recognised him as a distinguished alumnus for his contributions to the theory and practice of analog and

RF circuit Radio-frequency (RF) engineering is a subset of electronic engineering involving the application of transmission line, waveguide, antenna and electromagnetic field principles to the design and application of devices that produce or use signals ...

s.http://www.twas.org/sites/default/files/member/abidi_curriculum_vitae.pdf

Life and education

Born and raised in

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

, Abidi was educated till matriculation at

Cadet College Hasan Abdal Cadet College, Hasan Abdal (CCH) Urdu/Pashto :کیدت کالج/کیڈٹ کالج حسن ابدال is a residential secondary school located in Hasan Abdal, Attock District, Punjab, Pakistan. The college has over 500 enrolled students aged ...

, Pakistan, completed his high school from Dudley College of Technology, UK, and gained a B.Sc. degree (with first-class honours) in electrical engineering at

Imperial College Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cul ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, in 1976. Later he attended

; he gained an M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering in 1978 and a Ph.D in 1981 under the supervision of Robert Meyer. Abidi is an

IEEE Fellow As of 2019, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has 5,082 members designated Fellow, each of whom is associated with one of the 41 societies under the IEEE. The Fellow grade of membership is the highest level of membershi ...

and a member of the United States

(NAE). He joined LUMS (

) School of Science and Engineering as its first dean.

Academic career

Since 1985, Abidi has worked at

, where he is currently a Distinguished Chancellor's Professor. From 1981 to 1984, he worked for

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mul ...

as a Member of Technical Staff at the Advanced LSI Development Laboratory. He was a Visiting Faculty Researcher at

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

Laboratories in 1989. He is one of only a few Pakistani-origin members of the NAE. and was recognized as an ISSCC top-ten author. While working at Bell and then UCLA, he pioneered

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transm ...

research in

metal–oxide–semiconductor The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...

(MOS) technology and made seminal contributions to

architecture based on

complementary MOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSF ...

(CMOS)

switched-capacitor A switched capacitor (SC) is an electronic circuit that implements a function by moving charges into and out of capacitors when electronic switches are opened and closed. Usually, non-overlapping clock signals are used to control the switches, so ...

(SC) technology. While working at Bell in the early 1980s, he worked on the development of sub-micron

MOSFET The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...

(metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor)

VLSI Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) ...

(very

large-scale integration An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Transistor count, Large ...

) technology at the Advanced LSI Development Lab, along with Marty Lepselter, George E. Smith and Harry Bol. As one of the few

circuit design The process of circuit design can cover systems ranging from complex electronic systems down to the individual transistors within an integrated circuit. One person can often do the design process without needing a planned or structured design ...

ers at the lab, Abidi demonstrated the potential of sub-micron NMOS integrated circuit technology in high-speed

communication circuit A telecommunication circuit is a path in a telecommunications network used to transmit information. Circuits have evolved over time from generally being built on physical connections between individual hardware cables, as in an analog phone swi ...

s, and developed the first MOS

amplifiers An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It may increase the power significantly, or its main effect may be to boost the ...

for

Gb/s In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mult ...

data rates in

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparency and translucency, transparent fiber made by Drawing (manufacturing), drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a Hair ...

receivers. Abidi's work was initially met with skepticism from proponents of

GaAs Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monolithic microwave integrated ...

and

bipolar junction transistor A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a type of transistor that uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. In contrast, a unipolar transistor, such as a field-effect transistor, uses only one kind of charge carrier. A bipola ...

s, the dominant technologies for high-speed circuits at the time. In 1985 he joined

, where he pioneered

technology during the late 1980s to early 1990s. His work changed the way in which

s would be designed, away from discrete

bipolar transistors A bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is a type of transistor that uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. In contrast, a unipolar transistor, such as a field-effect transistor, uses only one kind of charge carrier. A bipolar t ...

and towards CMOS integrated circuits. He was a visiting researcher at

HP Labs HP Labs is the exploratory and advanced research group for HP Inc. HP Labs' headquarters is in Palo Alto, California and the group has research and development facilities in Bristol, UK. The development of programmable desktop calculators, ink ...

for a year in 1989, during which time he investigated A/D conversion at ultra-high speeds, before returning to UCLA and researching analog

signal chain Signal chain, or signal-processing chain is a term used in signal processing and mixed-signal system design to describe a series of signal-conditioning electronic components that receive input (data acquired from sampling either real-time phenome ...

s for

disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...

read channels, high-speed A/D conversion, and analog CMOS circuits for

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing '' signals'', such as sound, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniques are used to optimize transmissions, ...

and

communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

. Abidi, along with UCLA colleagues J. Chang and Michael Gaitan, demonstrated the first RF CMOS

amplifier An amplifier, electronic amplifier or (informally) amp is an electronic device that can increase the magnitude of a signal (a time-varying voltage or current). It may increase the power significantly, or its main effect may be to boost th ...

in 1993. In 1995, Abidi used CMOS switched-capacitor technology to demonstrate the first direct-conversion

transceivers In radio communication, a transceiver is an electronic device which is a combination of a radio ''trans''mitter and a re''ceiver'', hence the name. It can both transmit and receive radio waves using an antenna, for communication purposes. The ...

for

digital communications Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point o ...

. In the late 1990s, the RF CMOS technology that he pioneered was widely adopted in

, as mobile phones began entering widespread use. As of 2008, the radio transceivers in all wireless networking devices and modern mobile phones are mass-produced as RF CMOS devices. Abidi served as the Program Secretary for the IEEE

International Solid-State Circuits Conference International Solid-State Circuits Conference is a global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and Systems-on-a-Chip. The conference is held every year in February at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in downtown San Fr ...

( ISSCC) from 1984 to 1990, and was the General Chairman of the Symposium on VLSI Circuits in 1992. He was the Secretary of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council from 1990 to 1991. From 1992 to 1995, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

Awards and recognitions

* 2013 Armstrong Memorial Lecturer, Columbia University * 2013 ISSCC Outstanding Contributor over its 60 years * 2012 Best Paper Award, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (co-winner) * 2012 ISSCC Distinguished Technical Paper Award * 2009 The World Academy of Sciences-TWAS * 2008 UCLA HSSEAS Lockheed Martin Award for Excellence in Teaching * 2008 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits *: ''"For pioneering and sustained contributions in the development of RF-CMOS"'' * 2007 National Academy of Engineering *: ''"For contributions to the development of integrated circuits for MOS RF communications"'' * Top 10 contributors to the ISSCC in its 50-year history * 2000 IEEE Third Millennium Medal * 1998 Design Contest Award at the Design Automation Conference * 1997 ISSCC Jack Raper Outstanding Technology Directions Paper Award * 1997

IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award The IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize Paper Award was established in 1979 by the board of directors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in honor of Donald G. Fink. He was a past president of the Institute of Radio Engineers ...

* 1996 Best Paper Award of the 21st European Solid State Circuits Conference * 1988 TRW Award for Innovative Teaching Postdoctoral Research Associate

Fellowships and academy membership

* An

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

Fellow (1996) * Member,

United States National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy o ...

(NAE) (2007) * Fellow,

(TWAS) (2009)

Bibliography

* Ahmad Mirzaei, Asad Abidi, ''Analysis and Design of IF and RF Circuits for SDR Receivers: Anti-aliasing Pre-filters, Accurate and Low-noise Quadrature LO Generation and Injection-locked Dividers'', VDM Verlag, 2008 * Emad Hegazi, Jacob Rael, and Asad Abidi, ''The Designer's Guide to High-Purity Oscillators'',

Springer Springer or springers may refer to: Publishers * Springer Science+Business Media, aka Springer International Publishing, a worldwide publishing group founded in 1842 in Germany formerly known as Springer-Verlag. ** Springer Nature, a multinationa ...

, 2005. * Asad A. Abidi, P. R. Gray, and R. G. Meyer, editors, ''Integrated Circuits for Wireless Communications'', IEEE Press, NY, 1998

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abidi, Asad 1956 births 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American engineers American academics of Pakistani descent American electronics engineers Cadet College Hasan Abdal alumni Fellow Members of the IEEE Lahore University of Management Sciences faculty Living people Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Pakistani electrical engineers Pakistani electronics engineers Pakistani emigrants to the United States UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty Microwave engineers