Daquan believes that the semiconductor industry is currently at a crossroads. Companies are facing the colossal task of balancing short-term profitability and long-term innovation. He is grateful to work at a company that fosters an innovative environment, allowing him to work on a number of multidiscipline, future-looking projects, and where he is also given the resources to make an immediate impact.

As an engineer in the high-speed product and high-performance analog group, much of Daquan‘s innovative energy is focused on very high-frequency, 60 GHz for next generation Wi-Fi, 77 GHz CMOS radar for the automotive industry, E-band backhaul (71-76 GHz and 81-86 GHz, also called wireless fiber) and terahertz technologies. His doctrine is the continuous development of high-frequency parts that are both low-power and cost-effective – a challenge to say the least. Daquan pioneered CMOS 60 GHz technology when he led the ground-breaking project that met this challenge in 2002 with the first CMOS millimeter-wave and terahertz technologies. And he’s currently helping TI shorten high-frequency radar time-to-market using an off-the-shelf bulk CMOS process with the millimeter-wave technology that he developed in TI’s innovation center, Kilby Labs.

His most rewarding project, and one of the first projects at TI’s Kilby Labs, was the CMOS 60 GHz phase-locked loop and receiver for wide bandwidth communications - an innovation with the state-of-the-art phase noise performance as well as power, size reduction.

Daquan’s gets his inspiration for innovation by meeting his customers’ needs before they even know what they are. To do this, he follows the market very closely to figure what applications will be the next big thing. Asked what he would enjoy tackling next, Daquan is quick to identify CMOS high-frequency circuits for medical and portable devices that are cost-effective, high data rate and very low power.