Sadik Hafizovic

Sadik Hafizovic is co-founder and CEO of Zurich Instruments. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich in 2006 for research at the Institute for Quantum Electronics. After a postdoctoral experience at the Bio Engineering Laboratory of ETH, he co-founded the spin off Zurich Instruments in 2008. Since then, he has developed the company from an innovative lock-in manufacturer to a major T&M player and leading instrumentation provider for quantum computing. Entrepreneurship, organization development, FPGA technologies, quantum computing, experimental physics, and many things outdoors on land or on water resonate with him.

Sideband Analysis with Lock-in Amplifiers

27.02.2014

When a sinusoidal waveform is periodically modulated in either amplitude or frequency, sidebands are generated as a result of this carrier modulation. These sidebands can be measured using a lock-in amplifier. Zurich Instruments' lock-in amplifiers (such as the HF2LI and the UHFLI) can measure up to 8 frequencies simultaneously and...

Double-Sideband Suppressed-Carrier Modulation

28.08.2013

Double-sideband suppressed-carrier (DSB-SC) modulation is an amplitude modulation that consists only of the two symmetrical sidebands and no carrier band. I came across this scheme in an ultrasound application, where power utilization can be maximized when all power is available on the sidebands. It turns out that DSB-SC modulation can...

Broadcasting FM and AM Radio with the UHFLI

06.05.2013

Following my previous blog post , people advised me to try to broadcast FM radio too. For this, I had to retreat into Zurich Instruments' shielded radiation lab, so that my experiment would remain concealed. It then took about 5 minutes to broadcast tunes from my mobile phone's 3.5 mm...

Listening to FM Radio with the UHFLI

17.04.2013

Someone at Zurich Instruments soldered a 3.5-mm headphone socket to a BNC cable and attached a 75-cm antenna wire to the Signal Input of the UHFLI Lock-in Amplifier with the UHF-PID PID/PLL option and was happily listening to FM radio. Abuse alert! I instantly had to copy that one.