Integrated circuits have fueled several revolutions that have deeply impacted modern society, including the computing revolution, the internet and the first two wireless revolutions. We are at the dawn of the third wireless revolution, which I call the Wireless Mobile Reality revolution. Over the next fifteen years, new wireless paradigms spanning from radio frequencies to millimeter-waves and terahertz will change the way in which we interact with the real world, through applications such as mobile virtual and augmented reality, vision quality imaging, gesture recognition and bio- and materials-sensing.

However, at the same time, integrated circuits are starting to run out of steam – technology scaling is no longer yielding better transistors that are faster and lower power. Therefore, circuit design needs to be refreshed with new tools and techniques that draw inspiration from the layers below (electromagnetics and device physics) and the layers above (communication systems and networking).

In this talk, I will describe research along these lines from the CoSMIC lab at Columbia University. I will start by describing a new approach to breaking Lorentz reciprocity to engineer high-performance non-reciprocal components, such as gyrators, isolators and circulators. I will then talk about how these integrated non-reciprocal circulators enable practical integrated full-duplex wireless radios. Finally, I will talk about the FlexICoN project at Columbia which is taking a holistic and cross-layer view of full-duplex networks from the physical layer to the networking layer. I will also briefly touch upon other work from CoSMIC lab in the same vein related to high-power, high-efficiency millimeter-wave radios, MIMO radios, opto-electronic LIDARs and city-scale wireless testbeds.