Eduard ALARCÓN Associate Professor Energy Processing Integrated Circuits - EPIC group Department of Electronics Engineering School of Telecom Engineering Technical University of Catalunya (UPC BarcelonaTech) Office 105, Building C4, Campus Nord 08034 Barcelona, Spain Phone: (34) (93)-401-56-78 FAX: (34) (93)-401-67-56 eduard.alarcon@upc.edu

 

Short résumé: Eduard Alarcón (S'96, M'01) received the M. Sc. (national award) and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Catalunya (UPC BarcelonaTech), Spain, in 1995 and 2000, respectively. Since 1995 he has been with the Department of Electronic Engineering at UPC, where he became Associate Professor in 2000. During the period 2006-2009 he was Associate Dean of International Affairs at the School of Telecommunications Engineering, UPC. From August 2003 to January 2004, July-August 2006 and July-August 2010 he was a Visiting Professor at the CoPEC center, University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and during January-June 2011 he is Visiting Professor at the School of ICT/Integrated Devices and Circuits, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. He has co-authored more than 150 international scientific publications, 3 books, 4 book chapters and 4 patents, and has been involved in different National, European and US R&D projects within his research interests including the areas of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits, on-chip power management circuits, energy harvesting and wireless energy transfer, and communications at the nanoscale. He has given 18 invited or plenary lectures and tutorials in Europe, America and Asia, was appointed by the IEEE CAS society as distinguished lecturer for 2009-2010 and lectures yearly MEAD courses at EPFL. He is elected member of the IEEE CAS Board of Governors (2010-2013) and member of the IEEE CAS long term strategy committee. He was recipient of the Myril B. Reed Best Paper Award at the 1998 IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems. He was the invited co-editor of a special issue of the Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing journal devoted to current-mode circuit techniques, and a special issue of the International Journal on Circuit Theory and Applications. He co-organized two special sessions related to on-chip power management at IEEE ISCAS03 and IEEE ISCAS06 and a tutorial at IEEE ISCAS09 and ESSCIRC 2011. He was the 2007 Chair of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Technical Committee of Power Systems and Power Electronics Circuits. He was the technical program co-chair of the 2007 European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design - ECCTD07, tutorial co-chair at ICM 2010, track co-chair of the IEEE ISCAS 2007, IEEE MWSCAS07, IEEE ISCAS 2008, ECCTD’09, IEEE MWSCAS09, IEEE ICECS'2009, ESSCIRC 2010, PwrSOC 2010, and TPC member for IEEE WISES 2009, WISES 2010, IEEE COMPEL 2010, IEEE ICECS 2010, IEEE PRIME 2011 and ASQED 2011. He served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems - II: Express briefs (2006-2007) and currently serves as Associate Editor of the Transactions on Circuits and Systems – I: Regular papers (2006-), Elsevier’s Nano Communication Networks journal (2009-) and in the Senior Editorial Board of the IEEE Journal on IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems (2010-).

 

Education

·     Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, Jan 2000 Technical University of Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain

·     M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (“Ingeniería de Telecomunicación”, specialization in Electronics), 1995, Technical University of Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain (national award)

Academic positions

·     Tenured Associate Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering, UPC, 2000 - to date

·     Associate Dean (International affairs), School of Electrical and Telecom Engineering (ETSETB), UPC, May 2006–May 2009

·     USA-Liaison Adjunct to the Dean at the School of Telecom Engineering, UPC (May 2009 – to date)

·     Visiting professor at RAMSIS group, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, January-June 2011 (prof. Ana Rusu)

·     Visiting professor at CoPEC center, ECE Dept, University of Colorado in Boulder, CO, US, Aug 2003-Feb 2004, Jul-Aug 2006 and Jul-Aug 2010 (prof. Dragan Maksimović)

·     Assistant Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering, UPC, 1995-2000

·     Research Associate, Department of Electronic Engineering, UPC, 1995

·     Founding co-director of N3CAT-NaNoNetworking Center in Catalunya

Research Interests

• On-chip power management circuits
• Mixed-signal integrated circuits
• RF communications transceivers
• Energy-aware processing
• Wireless energy transfer
• Energy-aware communications at the nanoscale

 

Awards & Honors

o       Elected member of the Board of Governors, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (2010–2012)

o       IEEE distinguished lecturer (CAS society) 2009-2010

o       Member of the IEEE CAS Society Long Term Strategy (vision) Committee (2010)

o       Best Paper Award (Myril B. Reed award), 1998 IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

o       National Electrical Engineering MSc Award, Spain, 1995 (awarded in a ceremony by the president of Spain)

 

 

Invited Lectures and seminars

o       Tutorial at the 2012 International Symposium on VLSI Design, Automation & Test (2012 VLSI-DAT), Hsinchu,Taiwan, April 2012.

o       Tutorial at ESSCIRC 2011, “Energy harvesting: device, circuit and system co-design and integration”, Helsinki, Finland, 15th September 2011

o       Invited seminar, “Data conversion frontends for switch-mode power converter digital control”, 20th Workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design, AACD 2011, April 5-7, 2011 Leuven Belgium

o       Invited lecture, “Energy-efficient on-chip power management: system, circuit and device perspectives”, IEEE Sweden Electron Devices Chapter, Friday February 4th, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden.

o       Plenary lecture, “Quo Vadis on-chip power management", IEEE ICECS, Athens, Greece, Dec 2010.

o       Invited lectures, “Energy-efficient on-chip power management: system, circuit and device perspectives” (IEEE distinguished lecturer program), PUCP, Lima, Perú, 10th Nov 2009 and Universidad Nacional del Altiplano, Puno, Perú (12 Nov, 2009)

o       Invited lecture, “Energy-efficient on-chip power management: system, circuit and device perspectives” (IEEE distinguished lecturer program), IEEE CAS Santa Clara Valley Chapter, Cadence Design Systems, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 19th October 2009.

o       Invited lecture, “Energy-efficient on-chip power management: system, circuit and device perspectives” (IEEE distinguished lecturer program), University of Putra Malaysia, Selangor, Malaysia, June 2009.

o       Tutorial at IEEE ISCAS09, System/Circuit Co-Design of High-Density On-Chip Power Management Functions for Battery-Operated Terminals, Taipei International Convention Center, Taiwan, 23rd May 2009.

o       Invited lecture, “Switching Converter Topologies and Control Methods for Wideband Efficient On-chip Power Management”, LEES Colloquium, MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA,  USA, Nov 6^th 2008.

o       Invited lecture, “Optimization and implementation of a multi-level buck converter for standard CMOS on-chip Integration”, International Workshop on Power Supply on Chip, September 22nd - 24th, 2008, Cork, Ireland

o       Invited seminar, “Wideband efficient amplifiers for on-chip adaptive power management applications”, 17th Workshop on Advances in Analogue Circuit Design, AACD2008, Pavia, Italy, April 2008

o       Panelist, topic ”power management”, AACD2008, Pavia, Italy, April 2008

o       Invited lecture, “Energy-Processing Integrated circuits”, GT Analog, Power, & Energy IC Research lab, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, May 2007.

o       Keynote plenary lecture, “Power consumption management in portable applications”, ICED 2006, 2nd International conference on electronic design, Veracruz, Mexico, November 2006.

o       Panelist, topic ”Future trends in engineering education”, Veracruz, Mexico, November 2006.

o       Invited tutorial, “Powering ICs: Trends in on-chip switching power regulators”, invited tutorial, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, Dec. 23, 2005

o       Invited seminar, “On-chip integrated adaptive power management circuits for high-efficiency multistandard RF PA”, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, Seoul, South Korea, December 2005.

o       Invited lecture, “On-chip power processing and control”, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO,  USA, 20 Dec 2003

o       Invited lecture, “On-chip power processing and control”, Analog VLSI lab, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA, 25 November 2003.

o       Invited lecture, “On-chip power processing and control”, Polytechnical University of Brooklyn, New York, USA, 20 November 2003.

o       Invited seminar, “Energy-processing integrated circuits for wireless applications and systems-on-chip”, Universita degli studi di Ancona, Italy, June 2003.

o       Invited lecture, "Current-mode analog signal processing: Evolution and future prospection", URV, Tarragona, Spain, 13 Dec 2000

o       Seminar, “System-Level and IC Implementation Techniques for Power Management in Battery- Powered Portable Electronics,” Dragan Maksimovic and Eduard Alarcón, MEAD course in Power Management, lectured at University of Santa Cruz, CA, USA in March and Ecole Politecnique Federale de Lausanne, EPFL, in September, 2004- to date (yearly)

 

Journal activities

o       Associate Editor, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—I: REGULAR PAPERS (2006–to date)

o       Associate Editor, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS (2006–2007).

o       Member of the Senior Editorial Board of the IEEE Journal on Emerging Topics of Circuits and Systems  (JETCAS) (2010–to date)

o       Associate Editor, NanoCommunications, Elsevier (2010–to date)

o       Editorial Board member for the Journal of Low Power Electronics (JOLPE) (2011–to date)

o       Editorial Board, Recent advances in Patents in Electrical Engineering (2009–to date)

o       Invited Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions of Power Electronics (TPEL) and Power Electronics Society, Special issue on "Power Supply on Chip", Guest co-editors: Cian Ó Mathúna, Yan-Fei Liu, December 2012.

o       Invited Editor of the “Advances in Power Electronics” journal, Hindawi, Special issue on "Power Delivery for Single- and MultiCore Processors and Platforms", co-editors: Jaber Abu-Qahouq (Univ. Alabama), Shamala.Chickamenahalli (Intel Corp), Eduard Alarcón (UPC), May 2011

o       Invited co-editor, special issue of International Journal on Circuit Theory and Applications journal devoted to selected papers from ECCTD07, Manuel Delgado-Restituto, Eduard Alarcón, Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez, July 2009

o       Invited co-editor, 'Current-mode circuit techniques: More than a decade after their renaissance ', Eva Vidal,  Eduard Alarcón and Barrie Gilbert, special issue of Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing journal, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Feb 2004.

o       Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – part I , IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – part II , Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (Kluwer Academic Publishers ), IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Power Electronics Letters, Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing  (Kluwer Academic Publishers), IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems, IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation & Measurement, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Power Electronics Letters, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEE Proceedings Circuits, Devices and Systems, HAIT journal of science and engineering, Asian Journal of Control, International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, Journal of Low Power Electronics (JOLPE), ETRI Journals, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos

 

Research review panels

o       Member of the International Advisory Board for the Microelectronics Competence Centre (Ireland)

o       Member of the review panel for Canada Foundation for Innovation (Canada)

o       Member of the review panel for Flanders Research Foundation (Belgium)

o       Member of the review panel for the Spanish Research Foundation (Spain)

Conference Activities

o       Track chair, IEEE Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, ICECS'2011 (Beirut, Lebanon)

o       Technical Program Committee member, IEEE PRIME 2011, Trento, Italy

o       Technical Program Committee member, 4th Asia Symposium on Quality Electronic Design, IEEE ASQED 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

o       Technical Program Committe vice-chair, 5th International Conference on Nano-Networks, NANO-NET 2011, 14-16 March 2011 - Atlanta, Georgia, USA

o       Tutorial chair, 2010 IEEE Intl Conference on Microelectronics, ICM'2010 (El Cairo, Egypt)

o       Technical Program Committee member, Twelfth IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL 2010), Boulder, CO

o       Technical Program Committee member, 2nd International Workshop on Power Supply On Chip, 2010, Cork, Ireland

o       Track chair, IEEE Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, ICECS'2010 (Athens, Greece)

o       Track co-chair, 2010 European Solid-State Circuits Conference, ESSCIRC, 13-18 September, Seville, Spain (topic: power management, with Y. Manoli, Univ. Freiburg)

o       General co-chair, 1^st and 2nd NaNoNetworking workshop, (with Ian F. Akyldiz, GeorgiaTech, US), 2010 and 2011.

o       Track chair, IEEE Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, ICECS'2009 (Medina, Tunesia)

o       Organizer, special session, “NanoCommunications” BIONETICS, Boston, US, Dec 2010, (with Özgur Akan, Middle Eastern University, Albert Cabellos, UPC)

o       Technical Program Committee, 2010 European Solid-State Circuits Conference, ESSCIRC, 13-18 September, Seville, Spain

o       Track co-chair, 2009 IEEE Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems, ICECS'2009 (Medina, Tunesia) (with Alberto Gola, Infineon)

o       Track chair, IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems MWSCAS 2009 (Cancun, Mexico)

o       Track chair, 2009 European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design –ECCTD09 (Antalya, Turkey)

o       Track chair, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2008 (Seattle, US) (with Miroslav Begović, GeorgiaTech, US)

o       Technical Program co-chair, 2007 European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design –ECCTD07 (Seville, Spain) (with Manuel Delgado-Restituto, IMSE-CNM, Seville, Spain)

o       Track chair, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2007 (New Orleans, US) (with Karen Miu, Drextel University, US)

o       Track chair, IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems IEEE MWSCAS07 (Montreal, Canada)

o       Chair, IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Technical Committee of Power Systems and Power Electronics Circuits, 2007

o       Special session co-organizer “monolithic integration of switching power regulators: trends in On-chip power management techniques” IEEE IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS06 (Kobe, Japan) - (with prof. Dariusz Czarkowski, Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, NY, USA and prof. Amit Patra, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India)

o       Special session co-organizer “new trends in switching power converters towards circuit integration””, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS03 (Bangkok, Thailand) - (with prof. L. Fortuna, Università di Catania, Italy)

o       Review Committee member (RCM), Power Circuits Track, IEEE Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems IEEE MWSCAS06 (Puerto Rico)

o       Review Committee member (RCM), Analog Circuits Track, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems ISCAS 2003

o       Technical Reviewer IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems – ISCAS, IEEE Power Specialists Power Conference - PESC , IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference – APEC , IEEE EPE-PEMC, International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications – NOLTA, IEEE International Symposium on Industrial Electronics – ISIE, Diseño de circuitos integrados y sistemas - DCIS Conference, 'Seminario Anual de Automática y Electrónica Industrial'- SAAEI

o       Conference Session chairman

·        “Power Electronic Circuits”, Eduard Alarcon and Marian Kazimierczuk (Wright State University, OH), 2011 IEEE International  Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 2011.

·        “Modeling & Control of Power Converter”, Eduard Alarcon and C. K. Michael Tse (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), 2011 IEEE International  Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 2011.

·        “DC/DC converters” (lecture session), Bernhard Wicht,  (Texas Instruments, Germany) and Eduard Alarcon, European Solid-State Circuits Conference, ESSCIRC 2010, Seville, Spain, Set 2010.

·        “Integrated Power Electronics” (lecture session), Tadashi Suetsugu (Fukuoka University, Japan) and Eduard Alarcon, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2009, Taipei, Taiwan. May 2009

·        “Control in Power Electronics” (lecture session), Tsorng-Juu Liang (Taiwan Univ. of Science and Technology) and Eduard Alarcon, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2009, Taipei, Taiwan. May 2009

·        “Analog and mixed-signal IC design” (lecture session), José Luis Ausín (Unex) and Eduard Alarcon, DCIS 2009, Zaragoza.

·        “On-chip power management circuits”, Jaber Abu Qahouq (Intel) and Eduard Alarcon, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2008, Seattle, USA

·        “On-chip Low-power Electronics”, Gabriel Rincon-Mora (Georgia Tech) and Eduard Alarcon, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2007, New Orleans, USA

·        “Log-domain & Complex Analog Signal Processing”, Eduard Alarcon, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2006, Kos Island, Greece.

·        “Integrated Power Electronics Circuits”, Eduard Alarcon and Tadashi Suetsugu (Fukuoka University), IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2005, Kobe Japan.

·        “Error Calibration & Compensation of ADCs”, Eduard Alarcon and Un-Ku Moon (Oregon State Univ.), IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2005, Kobe Japan.

·        “Low Voltage/Low Power Filters”, Eduard Alarcon and Gaetano Palumbo, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems 2005, Kobe Japan.

·        "Modelling and simulation of dynamic systems", 'Seminario Anual de Automática y Electrónica Industrial' (Alcalá de Henares, 2002)

·        "Modelling and simulation of dynamic systems", 'Seminario Anual de Automática y Electrónica Industrial'(Terrassa, 2001)

Publications

Books

·    “CMOS Integrated Switching Power Converters: A Structured Design Approach”, Gerard Villar-Piqué (NXP Semiconductors, Netherlands), Eduard Alarcón, 1st Edition., 2011, XL, 313 p. 227 illus. Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4419-8842-3. Springer 2011.

·    “Voltage Regulators for Next Generation Microprocessors”, Toni López, Reinhold Elferich, Eduard Alarcón, 1st Edition., 2011, X, 490 p. 100 illus. Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-4419-7559-1 Springer 2011.

·    “Chaos in Switching Converters for Power Management: Designing for Prediction and Control”, Enric Rodríguez, Abdelali el Aroudi, Eduard Alarcón, Springer 2012 (in press)

·    Proceedings of the 2007 European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design – ECCTD07, Manuel Delgado-Restituo, Eduard Alarcón, Ángel Rodríguez-Vázquez

 

Book chapters

·    “Data conversion Pulse-width modulators for switched-mode power converter digital control,” E. Alarcón, V. Yousefzadeh, A. Prodic and D. Maksimovic, an invited book chapter in Analog Circuit Design 2011, (Editors: M. Steyaert, A. van Roermund and A. Baschirotto), Springer Verlag 2011.

·    “Wideband efficient amplifiers for on-chip adaptive power management applications,” L. Marco, V. Yousefzadeh, A. García-Tormo, A. Poveda, D. Maksimovic and E. Alarcón, an invited book chapter in Analog Circuit Design: High-speed Clock and Data Recovery, High-performance Amplifiers, Power Management, Springer Verlag, 19 Sept. 2008.

·    'Mixed-signal Neuro-Fuzzy Processor Implementations. Sequential Architectures and Circuit-Level Description', Jordi Madrenas and Eduard Alarcón, contributed book chapter in 'Neural Networks and Systolic Array Design', Ed. World Scientific Publisher publication date Dec 2001.

·     "Current-Steering High-Speed D/A Converters for Communications", José Luis González and Eduard Alarcón, contributed book chapter in "CMOS Data Converters for Telecom", Kluwer Academic Press, 2002

Patents

• P200302465, “High capacity and low ESR structure in standard CMOS integrated technology”, inventors: G. Villar, E. Alarcón, F. Guinjoan and Alberto Poveda, country of application: Spain, Date of priority 28th Oct 2003, Applicant: UPC
• 12/139,340, “"Extended switched-mode controller”, inventors: Vahid Yousefzadeh, Eduard Alarcón, Dragan Maksimovic, country of application: US, Filing date: Jun 13, 2008, Applicant: University of Colorado, Boulder,USA. Publication number:US 2009/0310385 A1
• “Multi-level switching power converters using multiple supply voltages lines with a level chosen to maximize the number of possible differential output voltages”, inventors: Albert Garcia-i-Tormo, Ravi Karadi, Berry Butter, HenkJan Bergveld, Alberto Poveda, Eduard Alarcon, country of application: US, Oct 2009 filling date, Applicant: NXP semiconductors, Nethelands
• “A voltage-sensing circuit structure for a switching power converter and method for an enhanced fast-scale stability margin of a switching power converter”, inventors: Enric Rodríguez, Abdelali el Aroudi, Eduard Alarcón. country of application: European, filling date: Feb 2011, Applicant: UPC, URV

Journal Publications

• 'Application of sliding-mode control to the design of a buck-based sinusoidal generator', Domingo Biel, Enric Fossas, Francesc Guinjoan,  Eduard Alarcón and Alberto Poveda, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 48, No3, June 2001.
• 'Digitally programmable MOS resistive circuit', Eduard Alarcón, Herminio Martínez, Eva Vidal and Alberto Poveda, IEE Electronics Letters, 3rd January 2002, Vol. 38, No.1, pp 11-13.
• 'Current-mode analogue integrated circuit for sliding-mode control of switching power converterts', Eduard Alarcón, Alfonso Romero, Alberto Poveda, Sonia Porta and Luis Martínez-Salamero, IEE Electronics Letters, 3rd February 2002, Vol. 38, No.3.
• 'CCII-based analog integrated circuit for sliding-mode control of switching power converters', E. Alarcón, A. Romero, A. Poveda, S. Porta and L. Martínez-Salamero,  Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Kluwer Academic Press, Feb 2004.
• 'Up-to-Date Bibliography of Current-Mode Design', E. Vidal, E. Alarcón and B. Gilbert,  Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Kluwer Academic Press, Feb 2004.
• 'Extended mismatch and dynamic modelling of current sources in current-steering DACs : an improved design procedure', M. Albiol, J. L. González and E. Alarcón , IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems, special issue on Data Converters, January 2004, pp 159-169. 
• ’Synchronization of nonlinear electronic oscillators for neural computation', J. Cosp, J. Madrenas, E. Alarcón, E. Vidal an G. Villar,  IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, special issue on Temporal Coding for Neural Information Processing, Sep 2004, pp. 1315- 1327
• 'CMOS Integrated circuit controllers for switching power converters', E. Alarcón, G. Villar and A. Poveda, Jubilee special issue on power electronics,  Journal of Circuit, Systems and Computers, Volume 13, Number 4 August 2004, pp. 789-811.
• 'Sliding Mode Control of Switching Converters: General Theory in an Integrated Solution', A. Romero, L. Martínez-Salamero, J. Calvente, E. Alarcón, A. Poveda, S. Porta, HAIT journal of science and engineering, Special issue on power electronics
• “Towards an on-chip boost switching power converter: a design space exploration”, G. Villar, E. Alarcón, F. Guinjoan, A. Poveda, HAIT journal of science and engineering, Special issue on power electronics, vol. 2, iss-3-4, pp. 386-397.
• 'Synchronizable compact CMOS oscillator', G. Villar, E. Alarcón, E. Vidal, J. Cosp and J. Madrenas, mixed-signal letters, Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Kluwer Academic Press, vol 42, 2005, pp-179
• 'Modelling of quantization effects in digitally controlled DC-DC converters', Hao Peng, Aleksandar Prodic, Eduard Alarcón and Dragan Maksimovic, Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Volume 22,  Issue 1,  Jan. 2007 Page(s):208 – 215
•  'Three-level buck converter for envelope tracking applications', Vahid Yousefzadeh, Eduard Alarcón and Dragan Maksimovic, Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Volume 21,  Issue 2,  March 2006 Page(s):549 – 552 
• Yousefzadeh, V.; Babazadeh, A.; Ramachandran, B.; Alarcon, E.; Pao, L.; Maksimovic, D.;, “Proximate Time-Optimal Digital Control for Synchronous Buck DC–DC Converters”, Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on, Volume 23,  Issue 4,  July 2008 Page(s):2018 – 2026
• Dongsheng Yu, Herbert H.C. Iu, Hao Chen, E. Alarcon, and A. El  Aroudi, “Study of Instabilities in Digitally Controlled Voltage-mode Synchronous Buck Converter”, International Journal Circuit Theory and Applications, Oct 2010
• El Aroudi, E. Rodríguez, R. Leyva and E. Alarcón, “A Design-Oriented Combined Approach for Bifurcation Prediction in Switched-Mode Power Converters”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems– II: express briefs, vol 57, Nº 3, pp. 218-222, March 2010
• Herminio Martínez, Eva Vidal, Eduard Alarcón, Alberto Poveda, “Dynamic modeling of tunable analog integrated filters for a stability study of on-chip automatic tuning loops”, Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, Springer Netherland, June 2009
• Abdelali el Aroudi, Enric Rodríguez, Mohammed Orabi and E. Alarcón, “Modeling of switching frequency instabilities in buckbased DC–AC H-bridge inverters”, International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications, 18 Jan 2010
• Jordi Madrenas, Daniel Fernández, Jordi Cosp, Luis Martínez-Alvarado, Eduard Alarcón, Eva Vidal, Gerard Villar, “Self-controlled 4-transistor low-power min–max current selector”, International Journal Electronics Communications, Elsevier, Jan 2010
• A. el Aroudi, E. Alarcón, E. Rodríguez and R. Leyva, “A Nonlinear Time Varying Discrete Time Model for Dynamics of a DC-AC Buck  Switching Amplifier”, The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, COMPEL, 2009, Vol  29, pp     90-108, 2010
• Llatser, I., Pascual, I., Garralda, N., Cabellos-Aparicio, A., Pierobon, M., Alarcón, E. and Solé-Pareta, J., "N3Sim: A Simulation Framework for Diffusion-based Molecular Communication," IEEE TC on Simulation, No. 8, pp. 3-4, March 2011.  
• Gregori, M., Llatser, I., Cabellos-Aparicio, A. and Alarcón, E., “Physical Channel Characterization for Medium-Range Nanonetworks using Flagellated Bacteria”, Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier), October 2010. 
• Gregori, M., Llatser, I., Cabellos-Aparicio, A. and Alarcón, E., “Physical Channel Characterization for Medium-Range Nanonetworks using Catalytic Nanomotors”, Nano Communication Networks Journal (Elsevier), Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 102-107, June 2010. 
• Llatser, I., Cabellos-Aparicio, A., Alarcon, E., Jornet, J. M. and Akyildiz, I. F., “Scalability of the Channel Capacity of Graphene-enabled Wireless Communications at the Nanoscale”, submitted for publication, 2011. 
• Llatser, I., Pascual, I., Garralda, N., Cabellos-Aparicio, A., Pierobon, M., Alarcón, E. and Solé-Pareta, J., “Exploring the Physical Channel of Diffusion-based Molecular Communication by Simulation”, submitted for publication, March 2011. 
• Albert Garcia i Tormo, Alberto Poveda, Eduard Alarcón, and Francesc Guinjoan, “Fundamental Modulation Limits for Minimum Switching Frequency Inband-Error-Free High-Efficiency Power Amplifiers”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – part I, Jan 2011
• Enric Rodriguez, Abdelali El Aroudi, Francisco Guinjoan and Eduard Alarcón, “A Ripple-Based Design-Oriented Approach for Predicting Fast-Scale Instability in DC–DC Switching Power Supplies”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems-I: regular papers, VOL. 58, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2011
• J. Rodriguez, M. Delgado-Restituto, J. Masuch, A. Rodriguez-Perez, E. Alarcón and A. Rodriguez-Vazquez, “An Ultra Low-Power Mixed-Signal Back-end for Passive Sensor UHF RFID Transponders”, , IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Date of Publication: 23 junio 2011.
• Alireza Saberkari, Eduard Alarcón, Shahriar B. Shokouhi, “Fast Transient Current-Steering CMOS LDO Regulator Based on Current Feedback Amplifier”, the VLSI Journal on Integration, accepted August 2011.
• Toni Lopez and Eduard Alarcon, “Power MOSFET Technology Roadmap towards High Power Density Voltage Regulators for Next Generation Computer Processors”, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, 2011.
• Daniel Fernández, Jordi Madrenas and Eduard Alarcón, “A Low-power AFSM-based Controller for On-ChipDynamic Buck-Boost Power Converters”, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – part I (submitted 2011)
• E. Rodriguez, H.H.C. Iu, E. Alarcon, and A. El Aroudi, “A Frequency Domain Approach for Controlling Chaos in Switching Converters”,  IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems – part I (submitted 2011)
•  E. Rodríguez, A. El Aroudi and E. Alarcón, “LC Voltage Sensing Compact  Circuit for Switching  Regulators Aiming Integration and System Stabilization”, IEE Electronics Letters (submitted 2011).
• Elisenda Bou, Eduard Alarcon, Alvar Saenz-Otero and Christopher Mandy, “Translayer Optimized co-Design of in-Space Wireless Power Transfer”, EEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems I (submitted 2011)

 

PhD Students

• Dr. Gerard Villar-Piqué  (main advisor)
• PhD thesis: Monolithic integration in standard CMOS technologies of switching power converters for low power applications
• PhD defense: Nov 19th 2007. Currently Senior Research Scientist at NXP Semiconductors, Eindhoven, Netherlands

 

 

• Dr. Alireza Saberkari (“International advisor”)
• PhD thesis:  Design and Simulation of a Single Chip CMOS RF Transmitter for DCS1800 Wireless Communication Standard
• PhD defense: Feb 2nd 2010 (Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran) Currently Assistant professor at University of Guilan, Iran

 

 

• Dr. Toni López (main advisor)
• PhD thesis:  PROSPECTS OF VOLTAGE REGULATORS FOR NEXT GENERATION COMPUTER MICROPROCESSORS
• PhD defense: June 18th 2010. Currenly Senior Research Scientist at Philips (Solid State Lightning group), Aachen, Germany.

 

 

• Dr. Lázaro Marco-Platón (co-advised with prof. Dragan Maksimovic, ECE, University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, USA)
• PhD thesis: TRANSLAYER SYSTEMS/CIRCUIT DESIGN-ORIENTED CO-CHARACTERIZATION AND OPTIMIZATION OF ALTERNATIVE TOPOLOGIES AND CONTROLS AIMING ENVELOPE-TRACKING RF TRANSMITTERS FOR FUTURE-GENERATION MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS
• International stay during PhD thesis: ECE, University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, USA (2006, 2007 and 2008).
• PhD defense: Sept 30th 2010. Currenly Senior Researcher at IREC, Barcelona, Spain

 

 

• Dr. Enric Rodriguez Vilamitjana (co-advised with prof. Abdelali el Aroudi, URV)
• PhD thesis:  “Design-oriented model for predicting and controlling fast-scale instabilities in switching converters. Application to advanced power management integrated circuits”,  
• International stay during PhD thesis: University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, (2009) (with Prof. Herbert Iu)
• PhD defense: February 20^th 2011.

 

 

• Dr. Albert Garcia-i-Tormo (co-advised with prof. Alberto Poveda, UPC)
• PhD thesis:  “Bandwidth Extension Techniques for High-Efficiency Power Amplifiers”, 
• International stay during PhD thesis: NXP Semiconductors, HighTech Campus Eindhoven, Netherlands, (2009) (with Dr. HenkJan Bergveld)
• PhD defense: April 15th 2011.  Currenly Research Scientist at Philips, HighTech Campus, Eindhoven, Netherlands

 

 

• Ignacio Llátzer (co-advised with prof. Albert Cabellos, Computer Architecture Dept and N3CAT, UPC)
• PhD topic: “ Modelling and characterization of bio-molecular and EM-carbon-nanotube-based communications at the nanoscale: a physical/network translayer approach “”, 
• International stay during PhD thesis: University of Wuppertal, Germany, (2011) (with Dr. Dmitry N. Chigrin), GeorgiaTech, Atlanta, US (2011) (with prof. Ian Akyildiz)
• Expected PhD defense Dec 2012.  

 

 

• Elisenda Bou
• PhD topic: “Wireless Power Transfer for Aerospace” 
• International stay during PhD thesis: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA,  USA, (with Dr. A. Saez-Otero)
• Expected PhD defense Dec 2012.

 

 

• Sergi Abadal (co-advised with prof. Albert Cabellos, Computer Architecture Dept and N3CAT, UPC)
• PhD topic: “ Nanonetworks for next generation Wireless Networks on Chip (WNOC) ” 
• Expected PhD defense Dec 2013.

 

 

MSc Students

• Raul Gomez Cid-Fuentes, “Synthesis of high-effciency electronically tunable switch-mode bandpass filters targeting low power applications”, Supervisors: Eduardo Alarcon (UPC), Feb 2011.
• Elisenda Bou, “In-Space Wireless Power Transmission Systems”, Supervisors: Eduardo Alarcon (UPC) / Christopher Mandy (Aero-Astro Dept, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT), Junio 2010.
• Eduard Barba, “System-level impact of Envelope Tracker Power Converter nonidealities  in Polar Transmitters for next Generation Mobile Communication Standards: EDGE standard”, Supervisors: E. Alarcon / L. Marco, 2009.
• Jordi Marchan, “System-level impact of Envelope Tracker Power Converter nonidealities  in Polar Transmitters for next Generation Mobile Communication Standards: WLAN standard”, Supervisors: E. Alarcon (UPC), 2009.
• Sebastiano Dirminti (from Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italia), “SystemC-WMS modeling of RF PAs targeting EER”, Enero 2008, MSc thesis, Supervisors: E. Alarcon (UPC) / Massimo Conti (UPM, Italia)
• Marina Ferran (industry internship at Philips, Aachen, Germany), “Investigation of a Resonant Converter Topology: LLC-I”, Junio 2007, MSc thesis, Supervisor: E. Alarcon
• Tommaso Leonardi (from Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italia) “SystemC-WMS modeling of different control techniques for switching amplifiers targeting EER”, Julio 2007, MSc thesis, Supervisors: E. Alarcon (UPC) / Massimo Conti (UPM, Italia)
• Enric Rodriguez Vilamitjana, “Ripple-instabilities prediction in power management techniques for mobile applications”, MSc thesis, UPC, Barcelona, Spain, Octubre 2006, Supervisors: E. Alarcon / A. El Aroudi
• Lazaro Marco, “Effects of switching power converter nonidealities in EER technique for implementation of polar RF PAs”, MSc thesis, UPC, Barcelona, Spain, Enero 2005, Supervisors: E. Alarcon / D. Maksimovic
• Til Vrana (from RTW Aachen),  “Exploring Envelope Approximations for Envelope Tracker Power Converters aiming Polar Transmitters for next Generation Mobile Communication Standards”, MSc thesis, Supervisors: E. Alarcon / L. Marco
• Daniel Šíra (from STU Bratislava), “Characterization of Class E RF Power amplifiers”, Supervisors: E. Alarcon / L. Marco
• Peter Pracny (from STU Bratislava) , “Nonlinear characterization of the supply-to-RF path in CMOS class-E RF PA targeting EER”, Supervisors: E. Alarcon (UPC), Daniela Durackova, STU Bratislava
• Miquel Albiol (now at MIER Comunicaciones) (co-advised with prof. J.L. González, UPC)
• Gerard Villar (2004)
• Toni Lopez (2001)
• Carles Andrés (2002)
• Mario Iannazo (1998)
• Elsa Lama-Vaquero (1999)

 

Visiting Scholars

·     Alireza Sabekari (2008-2009) - Asst. Prof. at Iran University of Science & Technology, Tehran, Iran

“CMOS linear low-dropout regulators for wideband-tracking linear-assisted schemes”

·     Geng Xiaoming (2009) –  Asst. Professor, Beijing Institute of Technology (China)

“Nonlinear baseband RF PA models”

 

Doctoral Dissertation Defense Committees

• Jason Hannon, ECE Dept, University College Cork, Ireland, 2011
• Gonzalo Murillo, Universitat Autònoma Barceloan, UAB, 2011
• Dr. Pedro Garcés, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Tarragona, Spain, 2009
• Dra. Loreto Mateu, EE Department, UPC, 2009
• Dr. Daniel Fernandez, EE Department, UPC, 2008
• Dr. Vahid Yousefzadeh, ECE Dept., CU Boulder, CO, US, 2006
• Dr. Carlos A. De la Cruz, Universidad Publica de Navarra-UPNA-, Pamplona, Spain, 2005
• Dr. Herminio Martinez, EE Department, UPC, 2005

 

Funded research projects and contracts

 

o       Project: Advanced Wide Band Gap Semiconductor Devices for Rational Use of Energy (RUE)

o       Principal Investigator: José Millán (CNM-CSIC, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain)

o       CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 (Spanish Ministery of Science and Technology)

o       Program period: Jan 2010 – Jan 2014. 

o       Investigators: 50 (CNM, UPM, UPC, UOvi, UZ, UPV, URV)