In the emerging applications of the Internet of Things – the vision of ubiquitous and pervasive sensing, collecting, and managing data through various sensors, communication technologies, and data analytic techniques, billions of sensors are attached to different objects. The power consumption of the analog front-end circuits in a sensor system is one of the most stringent requirements. The low energy consumption not only can be environment-friendly but also can benefit the customers economically.
This talk is about a suite of design on the low power interface circuits for the energy constrained sensing applications. First, we will discuss a nanowatt millivolt threshold detector for near-zero energy sensing applications. Next, an energy-efficient, fast-conversion, integrated thermal sensor for multicore system-on-chip thermal detection will be presented. Then, we move on to another interface circuit, analog-to-digital converters. An energy-efficient, area-compact SAR ADC based on passive charge sharing will be introduced. Finally, we will look forward to the future, with an eye towards applying and extending these interface circuit design techniques to different sensing applications and discussing the potential technical challenges.
