Boston’s first World Cup miracle doesn’t need a world governing body Braunschweig researchers win first German title at the RFIC Symposium

Shortly before the first matches of the Football World Cup were due to kick off at Boston Stadium, the international elite of high-frequency chip designers gathered in the city for the RFIC conference. And whilst the German national team is already dreaming of a fifth World Cup title, German universities are still striving for their first RFIC title at this ‘chip design World Cup’. Researchers from TU Braunschweig have now put an end to the scientific hopes and fears: by taking first place in the ‘Best Student’ category, they have brought the first trophy back to Germany. Their design for a frequency tripler for radar applications stood out from the international competition.

When title favourites France take on dark horses Norway at the stadium in Boston, it is not only an occasion for an evening of football, but also a tangible example of why better frequency triplers are needed in the first place. Up to 65,000 fans want to take their seats in time for kick-off and then think only of the football, not their safety. Security checks similar to those at airports are therefore carried out at the entrances. Already, radar-based body scanners are the most efficient and, compared to X-ray-based models, also the healthiest technological solution. Such devices in particular could benefit enormously from a higher frequency of up to 140 gigahertz. Frequency triplers for millimetre waves would then open up the potential to achieve real-time checks with significantly better resolution.

Pure signals with maximum efficiency

At the heart of high-frequency systems are oscillators that generate oscillations that are as uniform as possible. However, in order to produce as many different frequencies as possible with minimal noise, the oscillators operate at relatively low frequencies. Frequency doublers and triplers then multiply this output signal to the desired high frequency.
Researchers around the world are working on these key components for future radar technologies. In doing so, they must meet stringent requirements regarding the spectral purity of the output signal whilst maintaining energy efficiency. Researchers from Braunschweig – Sarah Koop-Brinkmann, Victor Lasserre and Professor Vadim Issakov – presented a design at the RFIC in Boston that requires no calibration, independently suppresses unwanted frequencies and boasts the highest efficiency achieved to date.
At the RFIC Symposium, the Braunschweig team were not only among the few German groups to have a paper admitted at all. The expert committees even selected it as the first paper from a German university ever to receive an award: first place in the ‘Student Paper Competition’.

Original publication

Koop-Brinkmann, Sarah, Lasserre, Victor and Issakov, Vadim: A Calibration-Free 55-to-70 dBc H1 Rejection, 13.8 % Efficiency, 102-to-120 GHz CMOS Frequency Tripler using Phase-Alignment Technique for Harmonic Recombination. IEEE RFIC Symp. 2026, https://ims-ieee.org/technical-program-view/2350#paper-1139