Each year, the RFIC Symposium holds a student paper contest to select the top-three student papers.  Additional information on the contest eligibility and judging procedure is provided below.  First, second, and third prizes will be announced at the RFIC Plenary session on June 5, 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland.  Each winner will receive a plaque and a check.

The 2011 Student Paper Finalists are as follows:

• Muhammad Hassan, Myoungbo Kwak, Vincent W. Leung , Chin Hsia, Jonmei J. Yan, Donald F. Kimball, Lawrence E. Larson, and Peter M. Asbeck，“High Efficiency Envelope Tracking Power Amplifier with Very Low Quiescent Power for 20MHz LTE”, University of California, San Diego.
• Subhanshu Gupta, Daibashish Gangopadhyay, Hasnain Lakdawala, Jacques C. Rudell and David J. Allstot, “A QPLL-Timed Direct-RF Sampling Band-Pass ΣΔ ADC with a 1.2GHz Tuning Range in 0.13μm CMOS”, University of Washington.
• Ankush Goel, Behnam Analui, and Hossein Hashemi, “A 130nm CMOS 100Hz–6GHz Reconfigurable Vector Signal Analyzer and Software-Defined Receiver” , University of Southern California.
• Amin Jahanian and Payam Heydari, “A CMOS Distributed Amplifier with Active Input Balun Using GBW and Linearity Enhancing Techniques”, University of California, Irvine.
• Yanyu Jin, John R. Long, and Marco Spirito, “A 7dB NF 60GHz Band Millimeter-Wave Transconductance Mixer”, Delft University of Technology.
• Jian Chen, Liang Rong, Fredrik Jonsson, and Li-Rong Zheng, “All-Digital Transmitter based on ADPLL and Phase Synchronized Delta Sigma Modulator”, ICT School, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology).
• Amin Arbabian, Shinwon Kang, Steven Callender, Bagher Afshar, Jun-Chau Chien, and Ali Niknejad, “A 90GHz Pulsed-Transmitter with Near-Field/Far-Field Energy Cancellation using a Dual-Loop Antenna”, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley.
• Chun-Cheng Wang, Zhiming Chen, Hsin-Cheng Yao, and Payam Heydari, “A Fully Integrated 96GHz 2×2 Focal-Plane Array with On-Chip Antenna”, University of California, Irvine.
• Jianhua Lu, Ning-Yi Wang, and Mau-Chung Frank Chang, “A Single-LC-Tank 5-10 GHz Quadrature Local Oscillator for Cognitive Radio Applications”, University of California, Los Angeles.
• Shinwon Kang, Jun-Chau Chien, and Ali M. Niknejad, “A 100GHz Phase-Locked Loop in 0.13μm SiGe BiCMOS process”, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley.
• Yi Zhao, John R. Long, and Marco Spirito, “A 60GHz band 20dBm Power Amplifier with 20% Peak PAE”,  Delft University of Technology.
• Myoungbo Kwak, Donald Kimball, Calogero Presti, Antonino Scuderi, Carmelo Santagati, Jonmei Yan, Peter Asbeck and Lawrence Larson, “Wideband High Efficiency Envelope Tracking Integrated Circuit for Micro-Base Station Power Amplifiers”, University of California, San Diego.
• Ali Razavieh, Navab Singh, Abhijeet Paul, Gerhard Klimeck, David Janes, Joerg Appenzeller, “A New Method to Achieve RF Linearity in SOI Nanowire MOSFETs” ,  Purdue University.
• Jian Liu, Lijie Zhang, Xin Wang, Lin Lin, Zitao Shi , Albert Wang, Ru Huang, Gary Zhang, Shi-Jie Wen, and Richard Wong, “Nano Crossbar Electrostatic Discharge Protection Design”, University of California, Riverside.
• Laurent Negre, David Roy, Florian Cacho, Patrick Scheer, Samuel Boret, Alban Zaka, Daniel, Gloria, Gerard Ghibaudo, “Aging of 40nm MOSFET RF Parameters under RF conditions From Characterization to Compact Modeling for RF Design”, IMEP-LAHC.
• Usha Gogineni, Jesús del Alamo, and Alberto Valdes Garcia, “Analytical Model for RF Power Performance of Deeply Scaled CMOS Devices”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Congratulations to the 16 finalists. I encourage all the finalists and their advisors to share this exciting moment made possible by all of your hard work.  The committee thanks all the student authors for your contributions. We look forward for more students participating in this contest in the future RFIC Symposia.

Student Paper Contest Eligibility:  To be considered for an award, the student must have been a full time student (9 hours/term graduate, 12 hours/term undergraduate) during the time the work was performed. The student must be the lead author of the paper and must present the paper at the Symposium.  A memorandum will be automatically sent to the advisor to certify that the work was done by the student.    

Judging Procedure:  Student papers will be reviewed and admitted to the conference in the same manner as all other conference papers.  After the paper review process is completed, each technical program subcommittee recommends a maximum of two student papers as finalists. A student paper contest committee consisting of one representative from each subcommittee is then formed to review all the finalists and select the top three papers. Papers accepted for the competition will be judged on content. 

Announcement of Awards:  First, second, and third prizes will be announced at the RFIC Plenary Session on June 5, 2011 in Baltimore, Maryland.