I-Corps: Extremely compact, low-power sensing nodes that may fulfill the promise of smart dust

I-Corps：极其紧凑、低功耗的传感节点，可以实现智能灰尘的承诺

• 批准号: 2041569
• 负责人: Mircea Stan
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Virginia Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2023-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2041569&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Extremely; compact; low; power

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to explore applications of new wirelessly connected sensors. The proposed technology advances a an ultra-low-power sensor device for the Internet of Things (IoT), smart dust, or edge intelligence (EI) devices. Relative to current sensors, the proposed technology may create 100-fold improvements in the cost of thorough coverage and battery life, virtually eliminating the cost of battery replacement and sensor maintenance. Example applications in agriculture include preventive, cost-effective, and continuous monitoring of temperature, rainfall, wind direction, soil moisture, pests, and illness for informed decision-making. Other applications may include preventive/therapeutic healthcare, animal welfare, environmental monitoring, transportation, and industrial monitoring.This I-Corps project investigates translation of a novel system-on-chip (SoC) with end-to-end computing on asynchronous streams data-path that is composed of Asynchronous Sigma-Delta Modulators (ASDM) for acquiring sensor data, a computing-core for streams, a clock-less wireless interface and an analog memory. The key for the SoC power efficiency is the unique data representation - the ASDM maps analog data to asynchronous streams of 1s and 0s instead of digital numbers. The streams are sent to the computing-core composed of processing elements, such as multipliers and adders. A multiplier for streams may be implemented with a single AND gate and an adder with a 2:1 multiplexer, achieving savings in power and area of up to 90% compared with typical approaches.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该 I-Corps 项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是探索新型无线连接传感器的应用。 该技术提出了一种用于物联网（IoT）、智能灰尘或边缘智能（EI）设备的超低功耗传感器设备。相对于当前的传感器，所提出的技术可以将彻底覆盖的成本和电池寿命提高100倍，几乎消除电池更换和传感器维护的成本。农业中的示例应用包括对温度、降雨量、风向、土壤湿度、害虫和疾病进行预防性、经济有效和连续的监测，以做出明智的决策。 其他应用可能包括预防/治疗性医疗保健、动物福利、环境监测、运输和工业监测。该 I-Corps 项目研究了一种新型片上系统 (SoC) 的转换，该片上系统对异步流数据进行端到端计算-路径由用于采集传感器数据的异步Σ-Δ调制器（ASDM）、流计算核心、无时钟无线接口和模拟存储器组成。 SoC 功效的关键是独特的数据表示形式 - ASDM 将模拟数据映射到 1 和 0 的异步流，而不是数字。这些流被发送到由乘法器和加法器等处理元件组成的计算核心。流乘法器可以使用单个与门和带有 2:1 多路复用器的加法器来实现，与典型方法相比，可节省高达 90% 的功耗和面积。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为是值得的通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来提供支持。