Muhammad Ali won the Intel Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE 68th Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), held May 29-June 1, 2018, in San Diego, California. He is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and is advised by ECE Professor Rao Tummala.

Ali received the award for his paper entitled “Miniaturized High-Performance Filters for 5G Small-Cell Applications.” The paper demonstrates the first panel-based, ultra-miniaturized filters with a footprint smaller than half of the freespace wavelength at the operating frequencies of 28 and 39 GHz bands for 5G and mm-wave small-cell applications. Two filter types, lowpass and bandpass, with three topologies in total, are modeled, designed, and fabricated on precision thin-film buildup layers on an ultra-thin glass core. The simulated results of bandwidth, in-band insertion loss, and out-of-band rejection of filters show excellent correlation with the measured results.

This research was supported by the Industry Consortium at the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC) at Georgia Tech. Ali, along with his colleagues in the PRC, are developing all of the basic technologies to design and demonstrate glass-based modules with integrated passive components such as filters, couplers, and antennas for a variety of heterogeneous integration applications that include ultra-high bandwidth mobile wireless, 5G and millimeter wave communications, IoT, and low-power electronics as well as intelligent automotive communication needs.