I am an Assistant Professor in the Microelectronics and VLSI group, Deparment of Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE), of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. I work in the area of Analog and Mixed signal integrated circuit (IC) design with special focus on high performance and high bandwidth data converters.
I received my Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University, Chennai, in 2009, and the M.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, in 2011. From 2011 to 2014, I worked as a Design Engineer at Analog Devices, Bengaluru, India, where I worked on high speed chip-to-chip serial link communication. I obtained my PhD degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, in 2021, under Prof. Shanthi Pavan, in the area of data-converter design. I have also served as a Senior Project Officer in the Centre for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research (IC & SR), IIT Madras, where I worked on high performance analog filters.
Analog circuit design is an art. It is a perfect blend of diverse fields of ECE such as circuit theory, device physics and signal processing. It also requires a strong background of mathematics. An analog circuit designer needs to be methodical in his/her work and also eager to work hard. In this era of digital world, the analog blocks are equally critical as they form the interface between the real world (which is analog) and the computation intensive digital processors. This presents a lot of design challenges and is therefore an exciting field of research. An analog designer also gets lucrative jobs in the semiconductor industry due to his/her unique skillset.
IIT Roorkee offers M.Tech and Ph.D programmes, the details of which can be found here and here. Typically, admissions happen twice a year and the candidate needs to have a valid (and of course, good!) GATE score to apply. Highly motivated B.Tech students are also welcome to do projects in our group.
Our group focusses on the design of high performance analog blocks especially data converters. A typical IC design flow starts with the conceptualization of an idea, followed by extensive model simulations to verify it. The next step is the circuit design and layout in an industry standard process technology. The design is then sent for fabrication. The fabricated chip is then validated through measurements by mounting it on a custom designed printed circuit board (PCB). The measurement results are then published in a reputed journal/conference. (Some images of my Ph.D work can been seen in the left.)
If you interested in a career in Analog/Mixed Signal IC design and are motivated to do research in this exciting area, kindly get in touch with me with your CV.
Dr. Saravana Kumar M
S319, Dept. of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee
Roorkee - 247667, Haridwar distt., Uttarakhand, India.
Email : saravana.kumar@ece.iitr.ac.in
Ph-No : (91) 01332-28-5460