In this paper, we present a new scenario of the early Universe that contains a pre big bang Ekpyrotic phase. By combining this with a ghost condensate, the theory explicitly violates the null energy condition without developing any ghost-like instabilities. Thus the contracting universe goes through a non-singular bounce and evolves smoothly into the expanding post big bang phase. The curvature...

As the demand for higher data-rate communication increases, low-cost, high-speed serial links using copper cables become attractive for distances of 1 to 10 meters. For multi-Gbps applications, the data rate is limited by the channel low-pass characteristics due to cable skin-effect loss and the speed of the process technology. This design uses a receiver equalizer in combination with a transmi...

This thesis presents a 3.6-GHz, 500-kHz bandwidth digital AE frequency synthesizer architecture that leverages a recently invented noise-shaping time-to-digital converter (TDC) and an all-digital quantization noise cancellation technique to achieve excellent in-band and out-of-band phase noise, respectively. In addition, a passive digital-toanalog converter (DAC) structure is proposed as an eff...