Closing The Gap Between Silicon and Society: Inside IIIT Hyderabad’s Lab That Is Working Across The Full Electronics Stack

At a time when India is strengthening its semiconductor ambitions, IIIT Hyderabad’s researchers are developing indigenous electronics – from custom chip design and millimetre-wave circuits to privacy-preserving sensing and intelligent healthcare systems – that move seamlessly from the lab to real-world deployment.

In an age where governance, healthcare and mobility increasingly rely on data, how that data is sensed, processed and protected matters deeply. Visual dashboards, spatial maps and intelligent systems have become essential tools for decision-making, but behind every such system lies something less visible and far more fundamental: electronics.

Silicon-To-System Philosophy

At IIIT Hyderabad, the Integrated Circuits – Inspired by Wireless and Biomedical Systems, IC-WiBES research group led by Prof. Abhishek Srivastava, is rethinking how electronic systems are designed; not as isolated chips, but as end-to-end technologies that move seamlessly from silicon to real-world deployment. The group follows a simple but powerful philosophy: vertical integration from chip design to system-level applications.

Rather than treating integrated circuits, signal processing and applications as separate silos, the group works across all three layers simultaneously. This “dual-track” approach allows researchers to design custom chips while also building complete systems around them, ensuring that electronics are shaped by real-world needs rather than abstract specifications.

Why Custom Chips Still Matter

In many modern systems, off-the-shelf electronics are sufficient. But for strategic applications such as healthcare monitoring, privacy-preserving sensing, space missions, or national infrastructure, generic hardware often becomes a bottleneck. The IIIT-H team focuses on designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that offer greater flexibility, precision and energy efficiency than commercial alternatives. These chips are not built in isolation; they evolve continuously based on feedback from real deployments, ensuring that circuit-level decisions directly improve system performance.

Millimetre Wave Electronics

One of the lab’s most impactful research areas is millimetre-wave (mmWave) radar sensing, a technology increasingly used in automotive safety but still underexplored for civic and healthcare applications. Unlike cameras, mmWave radar can operate in low light, fog, rain and dust – all while preserving privacy. By transmitting and receiving high-frequency signals, these systems can detect motion, distance and even minute vibrations, such as the movement of a human chest during breathing.

Contactless Healthcare Monitoring

This capability has opened up new possibilities in non-contact health monitoring. The team has developed systems that can measure heart rate and respiration without wearables or cameras which is particularly useful in infectious disease wards, elderly care, and post-operative monitoring. These systems combine custom electronics, signal processing and edge AI to extract vital signs from extremely subtle radar reflections. Clinical trials are already underway, with deployments planned in hospital settings to evaluate real-world performance.

Privacy-First Sensing For Roads

The same radar technology is being applied to road safety and urban monitoring. In poor visibility conditions, such as heavy rain or fog, traditional camera-based systems struggle. Radar-based sensing, however, continues to function reliably. The researchers have demonstrated systems that can detect and classify vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists with high accuracy and low latency, even in challenging environments. Such systems could inform traffic planning, accident analysis and smart city governance, without raising surveillance concerns.

Systems Shaping Chips

A defining feature of the lab’s work is the feedback loop between systems and circuits. When limitations emerge during field testing such as signal interference or noise, the insights directly inform the next generation of chip designs. This has led to innovations such as programmable frequency-modulated radar generators, low-noise oscillators and high-linearity receiver circuits, all tailored to the demands of real applications rather than textbook benchmarks.

Building Rare Electronics Infrastructure

Supporting this research is a rare, high-frequency electronics setup at IIIT Hyderabad, capable of measurements up to 44 GHz – facilities available at only a handful of institutions nationwide. The lab has also led landmark milestones, including the institute’s first fully in-house chip tape-out and participation in international semiconductor design programs that provide broad access to advanced electronic design automation tools.

Training Full Stack Engineers

Beyond research outputs, the group is shaping a new generation of engineers fluent across the entire electronics stack- from transistor-level design to algorithms and applications. “Our students learn how circuit-level constraints shape system intelligence – a rare but increasingly critical skill,” remarks Prof. Srivastava. This cross-disciplinary training equips students for roles in national missions, deep-tech startups, academia and advanced semiconductor industries, where understanding how hardware constraints affect system intelligence is increasingly critical.

Academic Research to National Relevance

With sustained funding from multiple agencies, dozens of top-tier publications, patents in progress and early-stage technology transfers underway, the lab’s work reflects a broader shift in Indian research – one that is towards application-driven electronics innovation.

Emphasising that progress in deep-tech research isn’t linear, Prof. Srivastava remarks that at IC-WIBES, circuits, systems, and algorithms mature together. “Sometimes hardware leads. Sometimes applications expose flaws. The key is patience, persistence, and constant feedback. The lab isn’t trying to replace every component with custom silicon. Instead, we are focused on strategic intervention – designing custom chips where they matter most.”