Reducing Cost and Improving Energy Efficiency in Portable Sensor Electronics for Healthcare, Communication, and Security

降低医疗保健、通信和安全领域便携式传感器电子产品的成本并提高能源效率

• 批准号: 1408351
• 负责人: John McNeill
• 金额: $ 25.02万
• 依托单位: Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1408351&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Reducing; Cost; Improving; Energy; Efficiency

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are required whenever a signal from the physical world must be translated into a form that can be understood by a microprocessor or computer. Example applications include implanted biomedical devices for assistive technology, autonomously powered sensors for untethered health care monitoring, accelerometers and other sensors used in smartphones, and chemical sensors used in automotive and security applications. In most of these systems, available energy is severely constrained by battery power or scavenged energy limits. An additional difficulty for high precision ADCs is the requirement for calibration, which increases both manufacturing and operating costs. The goal of this work is to leverage advancement in digital integrated circuit manufacturing technology to provide a class of energy-efficient self-calibrating ADCs applicable across a wide range of rapidly growing technology areas. The proposed energy efficient approach would reduce ADC power consumption by at least a factor of 10, enabling new system architectures and capabilities, as well as extended battery life in existing systems. Self calibration allows reduction in manufacturing and operating expense, critical to providing the cost improvement end users expect. In the proposed work, prototype integrated circuits will be designed, fabricated, and tested in a nanoscale (28nanometers) integrated circuit process. (The design and verification process will be carried out using state-of-the-art design software and test equipment available in the investigator's research lab. This in itself is a valuable workforce education experience, as the student researcher will be carrying out a design process very similar to that used in industry.) Scaling of integrated circuit technology to nanometer dimensions has enabled dramatic improvement in digital power efficiency, with lower power supply voltage and decreased power consumption for logic functions. However, most traditionally prevalent ADC architectures are not well suited to the lower supply voltage environment, and investigation is ongoing for other architectures. The improvement in time resolution enabled by increased digital speeds naturally drives design toward time-domain architectures, which have shown promise but have not yet been able to provide both high accuracy and high energy efficiency. The proposed activity combines the principal investigator's previous work on precise time-based circuitry with digitally calibrated ADC techniques. The resulting research will enable a class of ultra-low-power, efficient ADC architectures suitable for a wide range of emerging applications requiring low cost, high accuracy, and energy efficiency.

只要必须将来自物理世界的信号转换为微处理器或计算机可以理解的形式时，都需要模拟数字转换器（ADC）。 示例应用程序包括用于辅助技术的植入生物医学设备，用于不受束缚的医疗保健监测的自主动力传感器，加速度计和智能手机中使用的其他传感器以及用于汽车和安全应用中的化学传感器。 在大多数这些系统中，可用的能源受电池电量或清除能量限制严重限制。 高精度ADC的另一个难度是进行校准的要求，这同时增加了制造成本和运营成本。 这项工作的目的是利用数字集成电路制造技术的进步，以提供一类节能的自我校准ADC，适用于广泛的快速发展的技术领域。 提出的节能方法将使ADC功耗至少减少10倍，从而使新的系统架构和功能以及现有系统中的延长电池寿命。 自校准允许减少制造和运营费用，这对于提供最终用户期望的成本提高至关重要。在拟议的工作中，将在纳米级（28NANOMETER）集成电路过程中设计，制造和测试原型集成电路。 （设计和验证过程将使用研究者研究实验室中可用的最先进的设计软件和测试设备进行。这本身就是一种宝贵的劳动力教育经验，因为学生研究人员将在设计过程中进行与行业中使用的设计过程。但是，大多数传统上普遍存在的ADC体系结构不太适合较低的供应电压环境，并且对其他体系结构进行了调查。 通过增加数字速度可以自然地将设计驱动到时域体系结构，这表现出了希望，但尚未能够提供高精度和高能量效率。 拟议的活动将主要研究者先前关于精确电路的工作与数字校准的ADC技术相结合。 最终的研究将使一类超低功率，有效的ADC体系结构适用于需要低成本，高精度和能源效率的各种新兴应用。