Design Project

Curriculum Vitae

First name: Denis Last name: Dondi

Place and Date of birth: Carpi (Italy), 18 Apr 1980

Address: (USA) 8272 Regents Rd. - Apt. 101, San Diego (CA) 92122

Civil status: Single Military service: Exempted

Telephone: +1-858-***-**** (cell) Email: abl0oe@r.postjobfree.com, abl0oe@r.postjobfree.com

Research and Work Experience:

• Feb 2009 to Now – Post-Doctoral Researcher with Prof. Tajana Simunic Rosing at Computer Science and Engineering

Department of University of California San Diego. The research project under development at UCSD consists of the design

and implementation of an embedded wireless platform for active ultrasonic Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) powered

through multiple energy harvesters, and the development of energy management algorithms for task scheduling.

• Feb 2009 – Ph.D. Degree in Electronic and Telecommunications at the International Doctorate School on Information and

Communication Technologies at Information Engineering Department of the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia – Italy,

with a thesis entitled “Energy Harvesting Systems for Wireless Sensor Network Devices”, supervisor Prof. Paolo Pavan and

Prof. Luca Larcher.

• May to Sep 2008 –Summer intern at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). I worked in the LSM group

supervised by Prof. Y. Leblebici to develop an electromagnetic energy harvester. I implemented a power regulator for a bio-

implantable device, which converts energy collected from an inductive link working at 1 MHz to a stable DC voltage.

• Jan 2006 to Jan 2009 – Ph.D. student at the International Doctorate School in Information and Communication

Technologies at Information Engineering Dept. of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia – Italy, supervisors Prof. P.

Pavan and Prof. L. Larcher. My research focused on Wireless Sensor Networks. During my first year I participated to an

industrial research project on the development of a IEEE 802.11-based wireless tracking system supported by Embit s.r.l.

Starting from the second year, I worked on a research project on the development of energy harvesting circuits utilizing

photovoltaic panel, piezoelectric transducers and RF sources, in collaboration with Prof. L. Benini of DEIS, University of

Bologna, Italy.

• Oct 2005 to Feb 2006 – External consultant at Embit s.r.l. I collaborated to the design and implementation of an IEEE

802.11-based communication system adopting a mesh network approach for vehicular tracking issues.

• Oct 2005 – Engineer profession national qualification

• Jul 2005 – Laurea degree (vote 108/110) in Electronic Engineering (Telecommunication profile) at the University of

Modena and Reggio Emilia – Italy, with a thesis entitled “Analysis and Design of a CMOS Doherty Power Amplifier for

wireless communications at 1.8 GHz”, Tutor: Paolo Pavan and Luca Larcher.

• Jul 1999 – Perito Tecnico Industriale degree (vote 100/100) in Electronic and Telecommunications at I.T.I.S. L. da Vinci

(Carpi, Modena, Italy).

Ph.D. Thesis Abstract:

My Doctorate research work focused on the implementation of Wireless Sensor Network (WNS) for industrial applications.

The first part of PhD focused on the implementation of a wireless communication architecture for a localization system.

Then, my main research project exploited during my PhD consists of the design and implementation of energy harvesting

circuits from renewable sources to supply low-power wireless embedded systems. In particular, I designed and

implemented a solar energy harvester that allows replacing batteries for outdoor applications of low-power architectures.

Moreover, during 2008 I worked as visiting researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Y. Leblebici at Ecole Polytechnique

Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) to implement an energy harvesting system powered through a custom inductive link to

supply an implantable device for bio-medical applications.

Master Thesis Abstract:

The thesis work addressed the analysis and the design of a CMOS Doherty amplifier for wireless communications based on

STMicroelectronics 0.18µm CMOS technology. The Doherty amplifier is a custom architecture developed for vacuum

devices in 1936, due to the known efficiency performances of this amplifier we choose to investigate its implementation

with modern electronic technologies. The thesis approaches the amplifier design with an in depth analysis of both classic

Doherty amplifier and linear amplifiers. Analysis results have been migrated to the implementation with CMOS

technologies leading to considerable performance of 30 dBm output power at 1.8 GHz with 42% of PAE, representing a

state of the art result.

Recent Research Projects:

• 2009 to Now – Development of energy management algorithms for task scheduling in harvester powered devices, design

and implementation of a wireless embedded platform for SHM powered by multiple energy harvesters.

• 2008 to 2009 – Modelling and Optimization of harvesting circuits from RF power sources for Low Power Embedded Bio-

medical systems for WSNs.

• 2007 to 2009 – Analysis and development of a PSpice based Photovoltaic panel model; Analysis and modelling of Solar

Energy Harvesting circuits for Wireless Sensor Networks; Design, Implementation and Measurement of an Optimized

Solar Energy Harvester;

• 2006 – Analysis and implementation of an IEEE802.11 based mesh network infrastructure for wireless tracking system

over a wide area of tens of Km ;

International Publications:

Journals and Transactions:

D. Dondi, A. Bertacchini, L. Larcher, D. Brunelli and L. Benini “ Modeling and Optimization of a Solar Energy Harvester

System for Self Powered Wireless Sensor Networks,” in Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on, Vol. 55, Issue 7, pp.

2759 – 2766, Jul. 2008. (Impact Factor: 4.678)

D. Brunelli, D. Dondi, A. Bertacchini, L. Larcher, P. Pavan and L. Benini “ Photovoltaic Scavenging Systems: Modelling

and Optimization,” in Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 40, Issue 9, pp. 1337-1344, Sep. 2009 (Impact Factor: 0.812)

Conferences:

D. Dondi, A. Di Pompeo, C. Tenti, and T. S. Rosing “ShiMmer: A Wireless Harvesting Embedded System for Active

Ultrasonic Structural Health Monitoring,” to be presented at IEEE SENSORS, Nov. 2010.

A. Ravinagarajan, D. Dondi, and T. S. Rosing “DVFS Based Task Scheduling in a Harvesting WSN for Structural Health

Monitoring,” Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE) 2010, pp. 1518-1523, Mar. 2010.

E. B. Flynn, S. Kpotufe, D. Dondi, E. Figueiredo, T. Mollov, M. D. Todd, T. S. Rosing, S. Taylor, G. Park, D. Harvey, and

C. Farrar “SHMTools: A new embeddable software for SHM applications,” Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for

Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2010, vol.7647, pp. 764***-******, Mar. 2010.

K.M. Silay, D. Dondi, L. Larcher, M. Declercq, L. Benini, Y. Leblebici and C. Dehollain “ Load Optimization of an

Inductive Power Link for Remote Powering of Biomedical Implants,” Circuits and Systems, 2009. ISCAS 2009. IEEE

International Symposium on, pp. 533-536, May 2009.

D. Dondi, A. Bertacchini, L. Larcher, P. Pavan, D. Brunelli and L. Benini “ A Solar Energy Harvesting Circuit for Low

Power Applications,” Sustainable Energy Technologies, 2008. ICSET 2008. IEEE International Conference on, pp.945-949,

Nov. 2008.

A. Bertacchini, D. Dondi, L. Larcher and P. Pavan “ Performance Analysis of Solar Energy Harvesting Circuits for

Autonomous Sensors,” Industrial Electronics, 2008. IECON 2008. 34th Annual Conference of IEEE, pp. 2655-2660, Nov.

2008.

D. Dondi, D. Brunelli, L. Benini, P. Pavan, A. Bertacchini and L. Larcher “Photovoltaic Cell Modeling for Solar Energy

Powered Sensor Networks,” Advances in Sensors and Interfaces, 2007. IWASI 2007. 2nd IEEE International Workshop on,

pp. 105-110, Jun 2007.

D. Dondi, F. Bonizzi, U. Manzoli, P. Pavan, “W TS: A Novel IEEE 802.11 multi-hop mesh network for tracking systems,”

Mobile Adhoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), 2006 IEEE International Conference on, pp. 777-782, Oct 2006.

Technical Skills:

Operating Systems: Windows (XP, 2003 Server, Vista), Linux (Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu), Solaris, uCLinux.

Office Automation: Microsoft Office suite, OpenOffice suite, LaTeX.

Electronic CAD Tools: Cadence, ADS, Orcad, Eagle, PADS.

Simulation and Design Tools: Spice, ns2, Mathematica, Mathcad, Matlab, Aplac, Electric.

Programming Languages: C/C++, Visual C, Unix.

Languages:

Italian (mother tongue), and English (fluent).

San Diego, January 8, 2013

Denis Dondi

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