South African wins student design contest

Dr John Tanner, President and CEO of Tanner EDA, presented the first prize for the conceptual category at the 2005 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest.

Dr John Tanner, President and CEO of Tanner EDA, presented the first prize for the conceptual category at the 2005 DAC/ISSCC Student Design Contest.

The award was presented to Petrus J Venter, fourth year undergraduate student at the University of Pretoria, for the winning technical paper: "The design and implementation of a fractional-N frequency synthesiser for cellular systems".

In addition to the original award, Dr Tanner also presented Venter with the Tanner Award for Outstanding Achievement in Educational Design in recognition of the use of Tanner tools in the award winning design.

The winning paper was jointly authored by Petrus J Venter, a fourth year undergraduate student, and Saurabh Sinha, study project leader, at the department of MIEEE, University of Pretoria, South Africa.

The paper presents a PLL (phase-locked loop) frequency synthesiser, one of the most challenging subsystems in a monolithic transceiver implementation.

The design is based on fractional-N frequency synthesis techniques, employing direct charge injection for fractional spurious tone reduction and an integrated VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) with an active inductor resonant tank for a 0.35um CMOS based-implementation.

Venter used Tanner EDA tools for the entire design project.

Dr John Tanner, in presenting the awards stated: "Tanner tools were designed specifically to be easy to use and to empower the innovation and vision of the designer".

"It really is fantastic to see a student project deal with such cutting edge technical concepts".

"We have always had close ties with the academic community and Tanner will continue to recognise and support outstanding achievement in educational design".

The purpose of the Student Design Contest is to promote excellence in the design of electronic systems by providing competition between graduate and undergraduate students at universities and colleges.

The contest allows entries of both integrated circuits and electronic systems (board-level designs).

It has two categories: operational and conceptual.

Operational designs will have been built and tested.

Proof of implementation in the form of die or board photographs and measurement data must be supplied.

Conceptual designs need not have been implemented but must have been thoroughly simulated and must include a test plan.

The SDC award prize money is donated by industrial sponsors, of which Tanner EDA is one, as well as the DAC sponsors: IEEE/CAS, IEEE/SSCS, ACM/SIGDA and the EDA Consortium.

The Tanner Award for Outstanding Achievement in Educational Design is a new award from Tanner EDA.

It sets out to annually recognise and commend visionaries in creativity within the academic community.

Thereby Tanner EDA is actively reaching out to the academic community and discovering what students are excelling in.

The award itself is a sculptured artwork of a bright blue flame to capture this sentiment.

Back to top