IIIT-H Researchers Design Custom Semiconductor Chips For Critical Public Systems

Hyderabad: Amid India’s push to grow its semiconductor ecosystem, a research group at the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) is working on something less visible but more foundational — designing electronics that move from silicon to real-world systems.

The Integrated Circuits Inspired by Wireless and Biomedical Systems (IC-WiBES) group, led by Prof. Abhishek Srivastava, develops application-specific integrated circuits with full systems being built around them. Instead of treating chip design, signal processing and applications as separate areas, the team works across all three, refining hardware based on field feedback.

“For strategic areas like healthcare or critical infrastructure, generic hardware can become a bottleneck,” Prof. Srivastava said. “We design custom chips where they matter most.”

One focus area is millimetre-wave radar sensing. Unlike cameras, certain radars work in fog, rain and low light conditions and return signatures. The lab has built contactless systems that measure heart rate and breathing using subtle radar reflections. Clinical trials are underway in hospital settings to prove the systems.

The same technology is being tested for road monitoring, where the system can detect vehicles and pedestrians in poor visibility without raising surveillance concerns, they stated. When deployed, the systems could be exposed to signal noise or interference. Those insights are fed back into new chip designs, including programmable radar generators and low-noise circuits that are tailored to specific needs, Srivastava explained.

The lab operates a high-frequency measurement set-up up to 44 GHz, facilities available at only a handful of institutions in the country, and has also completed its first fully in-house chip tape-out and participates in international semiconductor design programmes.

“Our students learn how circuit constraints shape system intelligence,” Srivastava said, the group’s aim to train engineers who understand the full electronics stack. The work now sits at the intersection of chip design and public systems, where hardware decisions influence how technology serves society.