Rafael received the Degree of Engineer in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, the M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico. His current professional interests include CMOS RF and low-power analog and mixed-signal circuits.

He was recipient of a Howard Hughes Masters' Fellowship in 1987-88, a General Electric Foundation Faculty for the Future Fellowship in 1993, and a NASA-Ames Research Center Graduate Training Grant for 1995-98. Rafael has worked for Hughes Aircraft, Intel Corp., Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Innovative Semiconductors, and has consulted extensively for industry in Silicon Valley. He is currently Design Section Head of the System Silicon group at Synaptics, Inc., Santa Clara, California. Rafael is also a member of Tau Beta Pi and Phi Kappa Phi.

How to Build a Radio on a Chip
I study design techniques that will allow people to build inexpensive miniature radios with a single silicon chip and a couple of other small components. I also study ways of reducing the power consumption of such radios so that they may be used in portable devices that require a long battery life. I expect that this work will lead to new applications where miniature, low-cost radios will be incorporated into everyday devices and appliances. This will enable new, useful applications in areas such as ambulatory health monitoring, building & environmental monitoring, inventory management, wireless Internet access, and home and factory automation. I hope that the impact of small, inexpensive single-chip radios will be no less than that of the microprocessor revolution, which made microprocessor-controlled devices so pervasive in today's world.

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1-GHz and 2.8-GHz CMOS Injection-locked Ring Oscillator Prescalers (2001)

CMOS VCOs for Frequency Synthesis in Wireless Biotelemetry (1998)

Low Phase Noise CMOS Ring Oscillator VCOs for Frequency Synthesis (1998)

A Low Power Frequency Synthesizer for Wireless Biotelemetry (1997)

CMOS Injection-locked Ring Oscillator Frequency Dividers (2001)

Low Phase Noise CMOS Ring Oscillator VCOs for Frequency Synthesis (1998)

A 1.5 mW, 200 MHz CMOS VCO for Wireless Biotelemetry (1997)

A High-speed GaAs Transversal Filter Circuit for Clutter Rejection Systems (1990)

Spiral Inductor Calculator