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 that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

. He serves as a tenured

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

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, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

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

Lahore University of Management Sciences Lahore University of Management Sciences, also known by its acronym LUMS, is a Private university, private research university in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab, Pakistan. Founded in 1985, it is ranked as one of the most prestigious modern Li ...

(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 wir ...

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 allows homes, telecommunications networks, and business installations to avoid the costly process of introducing cables in ...

devices and modern

mobile phones A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This radio ...

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

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

followed by a

M.S. A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...

and

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

in 1981. He worked as an electrical engineer with

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

and in January 1985 joined

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

as a tenured 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, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

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 organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

and

The World Academy of Sciences The World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) is a North–south research partnerships, merit-based science academy established for developing countries, uniting more than 1,400 scientists in some 1 ...

. He received the IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits in 2008. In 2015, UC, Berkeley 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 electrical engineering involving the application of transmission line, waveguide, antenna, radar, and electromagnetic field principles to the design and application of devices that produce or ...

s.Abidi CV
twas.org

Life and education

Born and raised in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

, Abidi was educated till matriculation at Cadet College Hasan Abdal, 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,

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, 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 , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

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, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the company operates several lab ...

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. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, Californi ...

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 communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

research in

metal–oxide–semiconductor upright=1.3, Two power MOSFETs in amperes">A in the ''on'' state, dissipating up to about 100 watt">W and controlling a load of over 2000 W. A matchstick is pictured for scale. In electronics, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field- ...

(MOS) technology and made seminal contributions to

architecture based on complementary MOS (CMOS) switched-capacitor (SC) technology. While working at Bell in the early 1980s, he worked on the development of sub-micron

MOSFET upright=1.3, Two power MOSFETs in amperes">A in the ''on'' state, dissipating up to about 100 watt">W and controlling a load of over 2000 W. A matchstick is pictured for scale. In electronics, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field- ...

(metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor) VLSI (very

large-scale integration An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

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

circuit design In electrical engineering, 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 pl ...

ers at the lab, Abidi demonstrated the potential of sub-micron NMOS

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

technology in high-speed communication circuits, 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 is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power suppl ...

for Gb/s data rates in

optical fiber An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at ...

receivers. Abidi's work was initially met with skepticism from proponents of GaAs 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 (FET), uses only one kind of charge carrier. A ...

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 (FET), uses only one kind of charge carrier. A ...

and towards

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

s. 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 chains for disk drive read channels, high-speed A/D conversion, and analog

circuits for

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...

and

communications Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...

. 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 is a two-port electronic circuit that uses electric power from a power su ...

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 communication, including data transmission and data reception, is the transfer of data, signal transmission, transmitted and received over a Point-to-point (telecommunications), point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication chann ...

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

, as

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 * 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 an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Fellow (1996) * Member,

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

(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 Fellows of the IEEE Academic staff of Lahore University of Management Sciences 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