This award is the highest honor for Ph.D. students from the IEEE SSCS, and Hu is the first Georgia Tech student to receive this honor since this awards program was established in 1983.

Hu is a fourth year Ph.D. student in Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and is a member of the Georgia Tech Electronics and Micro-System Lab (GEMS), which is led by Hua Wang, the Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor in ECE. Thus far, Hu has authored or co-authored 22 peer reviewed conference and journal publications and one book chapter, all in the area of integrated circuits and systems.

The IEEE SSCS Predoctoral Achievement Award is based on Hu’s research on “Mixed-Signal Power Amplifier Architecture with Self-Contained In-Situ Linearization and Efficiency Enhancement.” This work focuses on innovating advanced RF transmitter architectures for high-speed wireless data transmission and power-adaptive, energy-efficient wireless power transfer. Powerful digital computation capabilities in nanoscale CMOS processes are leveraged for in-situ linearity and back-off efficiency enhancement.

Compared with conventional RF transmitters, these digital intensive architectures are particularly useful for full system-on-chip integration of next-generation, energy-efficient mobile devices or field-deployable wireless networks that can be used for both military and commercial applications, such as reconfigurable radars with digital beam-forming and wireless handsets for ultra-high speed, fifth-generation communication.