3 January 2013

RFMD’s Kevin Kobayashi named 2013 IEEE Fellow

RF Micro Devices Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA says that RFMD fellow Kevin W. Kobayashi has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers by the IEEE board of directors.

The IEEE grade of fellow was conferred on Kobayashi in recognition for his “extraordinary contributions to monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs)”. Less than 0.1% of the total IEEE voting membership is recognized each year by the IEEE’s board for elevation to fellow.

“Kevin is an outstanding engineer with an extraordinary record of accomplishments,” comments RFMD’s CEO & president Bob Bruggeworth. “His extensive industry knowledge and deep expertise across multiple technologies are valuable assets to RFMD and to our customers,” he adds.

Kobayashi is the principle author of 130 technical publications and the inventor of 48 US patents. Noteworthy are his inventions improving the broadband linearity and dynamic range of fundamental MMICs such as the Darlington pair, Gilbert cell, Doherty, cascode, and distributed amplifier topologies.

RFMD says that his early work on GaAs MMIC technology established the foundation for many of the first HBT, HEMT and MESFET MMIC insertions in national space satellite systems and for the first commercial GaAs HBT MMIC products for the wireless industry. He was early to recognize the benefits of GaAs HBT for RF and microwave applications, and he was first to design a microwave GaAs HBT Darlington feedback amplifier, later helping to commercialize it into a high-volume product, adds the firm.

Kobayashi's contributions to MMICs span multiple compound semiconductor and silicon technologies. According to RFMD, he helped to prove the viability of monolithic GaAs BiFET-type solutions in challenging microwave designs. He also demonstrated the advantages of InP HBTs for millimeter-wave and fiber-optic applications, later inventing a wide-dynamic-range transimpedance amplifier (TIA) currently deployed in an industry-leading 40Gbps InP receive optical subassembly (ROSA). More recently, Kobayashi has been engaged in the development of GaN MMICs, having achieved record low noise and wideband linearity, which is expected to enable future radio architectures. One of his HEMT-HBT MMIC demonstrations (the world’s first) is displayed in the MTT (Microwave Theory and Techniques) historical exhibit, along with a GaAs HBT MMIC that he developed.

Kobayashi serves on several IEEE conference committees and has served as an associate editor of the Journal of Solid-State Circuits, applying his RF and microwave experience in technical reviews of emerging silicon RF, millimeter-wave and fiber optic ICs.

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