Michael H. Perrott received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM in 1988, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and 1997, respectively. From 1997 to 1998, he worked at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, on high speed circuit techniques for Sigma-Delta synthesizers. In 1999, he was a visiting Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and taught a course on the theory and implementation of frequency synthesizers. From 1999 to 2001, he worked at Silicon Laboratories in Austin, TX, and developed circuit and signal processing techniques to achieve high performance clock and data recovery circuits. He is currently an Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and focuses on high speed circuit and signal processing techniques for data links and wireless applications.
Current research interests are focused on high speed communication systems with emphasis on phase locked loop circuits. A driving motivation for performing research in this area is to explore methods of achieving high performance implementations of such systems with low performance analog components. To do so, digital signal processing techniques are leveraged along with non-classical partitioning between the analog and digital circuits in the system.
Some specific topics of interest include
1) Low noise and high bandwidth fractional-N frequency synthesizers,
2) Fast acquisition clock and data recovery circuits,
3) Low cost, high performance wireless transmitters and receivers,
4) CAD software to better explore architectural ideas in mixed-signal systems.
Modern circuit design is expanding its focus to include the context of system issues when developing new circuit blocks. Therefore, I've developed a new course at MIT to examine both circuit and system level issues in the design of high speed communication systems. The course lectures, homeworks, and projects are freely available on MIT's OpenCourseWare site (link is given below). A brief description is as follows:
6.976 covers circuit and system level design issues of high speed communication systems, with primary focus being placed on wireless and broadband data link applications. Specific circuit topics include transmission lines, high speed and low noise amplifiers, VCO's, and high speed digital circuits. Specific system topics include frequency synthesizers, clock and data recovery circuits, and GMSK transceivers. In addition to learning analysis skills for the above items, students will gain a significant amount of experience in simulating circuits in SPICE and systems in CppSim (a custom C++ simulator).
Link to 6.976 OCW site To learn more about the activities in our group, check out:
MIT High Speed Circuits and Systems (HSCS) Group
Our group has developed a number of CAD tools that will be of interest to mixed-signal circuit designers, especially those
involved in the design of phase locked loop circuits. You can retrieve the packages and their accompanying documentation
at:
Custom Software by HSCS Group
My PhD thesis was on "Techniques for High Data Rate Modulation and
Low Power Operation of Fractional-N Frequency Synthesizers"
PhD Thesis (pdf file)
For details of my previous work experience:
Resume (pdf file)
Last updated July 1, 2006