Ultra-low power, mostly digital, integrated interfaces for the Internet of Things

The research is aimed to explore new circuits and solutions in CMOS integrated circuit design aimed to implement the functions of fundamental analog and mixed-signal building blocks, including, but not limited to, operational amplifiers, voltage/current references, oscillators, A/D and D/A converters,... by (mostly) digital techniques, allowing integration on silicon in nanoscale CMOS technologies and operation down to an extremely low power supply voltage (<0.5V) with good "analog" performance, while meeting the reconfigurability and ultra-low power consumption requirements of sensor/actuator interfaces for emerging energy autonomous IoT sensor nodes.

Unlike other researches in this area, which start from conventional analog solutions, the emphasis of this research is on completely novel methodological approaches (e.g. virtualization of physical references) and unconventional signal/information processing techniques allowing the direct re-definition/re-interpretation of analog/mixed signal functions in digital terms leveraging the advantages of a fully automated digital design flow and the implementation on re-configurable hardware platforms (FPGAs).

Part of the activities in this area are carried out in cooperation with the National University of Singapore (NUS, GreenIC Group) and are funded by the EU (ULPIoT project)

ERC Sector:

  • PE7_4 (Micro and nano) systems engineering
  • PE7_5 (Micro and nano) electronic, optoelectronic and photonic components
  • PE7_7 Signal processing

Keywords:

  • Analog-digital integrated circuits
  • CMOS integrated circuits
  • Mostly digital techniques for analog signal processing

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