Leveraging Automatic High-Level Synthesis Resource Sharing to Maximize Dynamical Voltage Overscaling with Error Control

Approximate Computing has emerged as an alternative way to further reduce the power consumption of integrated circuits (ICs) by trading off errors at the output with simpler, more efficient logic. So far the main approaches in approximate computing have been to simplify the hardware circuit by pruning the circuit until the maximum error threshold is met. One of the critical issues, though, is the training data used to prune the circuit. The output error can significantly exceed the maximum error if the final workload does not match the training data. Thus, most previous work typically assumes that training data matches with the workload data distribution. In this work, we present a method that dynamically overscales the supply voltage based on different workload distribution at runtime. This allows to adaptively select the supply voltage that leads to the largest power savings while ensuring that the error will never exceed the maximum error threshold. This approach also allows restoring of the original error-free circuit if no matching workload distribution is found. The proposed method also leverages the ability of High-Level Synthesis (HLS) to automatically generate circuits with different properties by setting different synthesis constraints to maximize the available timing slack and, hence, maximize the power savings. Experimental results show that our proposed method works very well, saving on average 47.08% of power as compared to the exact output circuit and 20.25% more than a traditional approximation method.

Low-overhead Hardware Supervision for Securing an IoT Bluetooth-enabled Device: Monitoring Radio Frequency and Supply Voltage

Over the past decade, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices increased tremendously. In particular, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) expanded dramatically. Resource restrictions on IoT devices and the insufficiency of software security solutions raise the need for smart Hardware-Assisted Security (HAS) solutions. These solutions target one or more of the three C’s of IoT devices: Communication, Control, and Computation. Communication is an essential technology in the development of IoT. Bluetooth is a widely-used wireless communication protocol in small portable devices due to its low energy consumption and high transfer rates. In this work, we propose a supervisory framework to monitor and verify the operation of a Bluetooth system-on-chip (SoC) in real-time. To verify the operation of the Bluetooth SoC, we classify its transmission state in real-time to ensure a secure connection. Our overall classification accuracy is measured as 98.7%. We study both power supply current (IVDD) and RF domains to maximize the classification performance and minimize the overhead of our proposed supervisory system.

A High-Gain Multiphase Interleaved Differential Capacitor Clamped Boost Converter

A step-up for a non-isolated interleaved differential capacitor clamped boost (IDCCB) DC–DC converter is proposed in this manuscript. Because of its ability to produce high voltage gains, it is used in high-power applications. This converter’s modelling and control design are applicable to any number of phases. A six-phase interleaved differential capacitor clamped boost prototype is tested in this work, with an input voltage of 60 V, an output voltage of 360 V, and a nominal output power of 2.2 kW. The components of the converter are placed and controlled in such a way that the output voltage is the sum of the two capacitor voltages and the input voltage, which is two times higher than the supply voltage when compared to a conventional interleaved differential dual-boost converter. This converter reduces the stress on the capacitor with reference to the conventional interleaved differential boost converter for the same conversion gain. This prototype is considered and the developed approach is applied, after which the experimental results are obtained. This converter has potential for application in areas such as renewable energy conversion and electric vehicles.

Growth of high-quality semiconducting tellurium films for high-performance p-channel field-effect transistors with wafer-scale uniformity

Achieving high-performance p-type semiconductors has been considered one of the most challenging tasks for three-dimensional vertically integrated nanoelectronics. Although many candidates have been presented to date, the facile and scalable realization of high-mobility p-channel field-effect transistors (FETs) is still elusive. Here, we report a high-performance p-channel tellurium (Te) FET fabricated through physical vapor deposition at room temperature. A growth route involving Te deposition by sputtering, oxidation and subsequent reduction to an elemental Te film through alumina encapsulation allows the resulting p-channel FET to exhibit a high field-effect mobility of 30.9 cm2 V−1 s−1 and an ION/OFF ratio of 5.8 × 105 with 4-inch wafer-scale integrity on a SiO2/Si substrate. Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) inverters using In-Ga-Zn-O and 4-nm-thick Te channels show a remarkably high gain of ~75.2 and great noise margins at small supply voltage of 3 V. We believe that this low-cost and high-performance Te layer can pave the way for future CMOS technology enabling monolithic three-dimensional integration.

Equivalent circuit modeling in GaN wireless power transmission including stray inductance and capacitance by measuring radiated emission

We establish the method for estimating the stray elements of the GaN-WPT circuit by measuring the radiated emission around the GaN switching device. By controlling the circuit supply voltage, the spectrum peak shift due to the output capacitance of the GaN-HEMT is observed. It is found that these peak shift characteristics include the influence of both the stray wire inductance and stray capacitance. By the fitting using the series resonance model, the value of the stray inductance and stray capacitance can be estimated in the non-destructive measurement in the GaN-WPT circuit.

A 65 nm Duplex Transconductance Path Up-Conversion Mixer for 24 GHz Automotive Short-Range Radar Sensor Applications

A 24 GHz highly-linear upconversion mixer, based on a duplex transconductance path (DTP), is proposed for automotive short-range radar sensor applications using the 65-nm CMOS process. A mixer with an enhanced transconductance stage consisting of a DTP is presented to improve linearity. The main transconductance path (MTP) of the DTP includes a common source (CS) amplifier, while the secondary transconductance path (STP) of the DTP is implemented as an improved cross-quad transconductor (ICQT). Two inductors with a bypass capacitor are connected at the common nodes of the transconductance stage and switching stage of the mixer, which acts as a resonator and helps to improve the gain and isolation of the designed mixer. According to the measured results, at 24 GHz the proposed mixer shows that the linearity of output 1-dB compression point (OP1dB) is 3.9 dBm. And the input 1-dB compression point (IP1dB) is 0.9 dBm. Moreover, a maximum conversion gain (CG) of 2.49 dB and a noise figure (NF) of 3.9 dB is achieved in the designed mixer. When the supply voltage is 1.2 V, the power dissipation of the mixer is 3.24 mW. The mixer chip occupies an area of 0.42 mm2.

Multipurpose Bio-Monitored Integrated Circuit in a Contact Lens Eye-Tracker

We present the design, fabrication, and test of a multipurpose integrated circuit (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) in AMS 0.35 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor technology. This circuit is embedded in a scleral contact lens, combined with photodiodes enabling the gaze direction detection when illuminated and wirelessly powered by an eyewear. The gaze direction is determined by means of a centroid computation from the measured photocurrents. The ASIC is used simultaneously to detect specific eye blinking sequences to validate target designations, for instance. Experimental measurements and validation are performed on a scleral contact lens prototype integrating four infrared photodiodes, mounted on a mock-up eyeball, and combined with an artificial eyelid. The eye-tracker has an accuracy of 0.2°, i.e., 2.5 times better than current mobile video-based eye-trackers, and is robust with respect to process variations, operating time, and supply voltage. Variations of the computed gaze direction transmitted to the eyewear, when the eyelid moves, are detected and can be interpreted as commands based on blink duration or using blinks alternation on both eyes.

T/R RF Switch with 150 ns Switching Time and over 100 dBc IMD for Wideband Mobile Applications in Thick Oxide SOI Process

This paper presents a fast-switching Transmit/Receive (T/R) Single-Pole-Double-Throw (SPDT) Radio Frequency (RF) switch. Thorough analyses have been conducted to choose the optimum number of stacks, transistor sizes, gate and body voltages, to satisfy the required specifications. This switch applies six stacks of series and shunt transistors as big as 3.9 mm/160 nm and 0.75 mm/160 nm, respectively. A negative charge pump and a voltage booster generate the negative and boosted control voltages to improve the harmonics and to keep Inter-Modulation Distortion (IMD) performance of the switch over 100 dBc. A Low Drop-Out (LDO) regulator limits the boosted voltage in Absolute Maximum Rating (AMR) conditions and improves the switch performance for Process, Voltage and Temperature (PVT) variations. To reduce the size, a dense custom-made capacitor consisting of different types of capacitors has been presented where they have been placed over each other in layout considering the Design Rule Checks (DRC) and applied in negative charge pump, voltage booster and LDO. This switch has been fabricated and tested in a 90 nm Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) process. The second and third IMD for all specified blockers remain over 100 dBc and the switching time as fast as 150 ns has been achieved. The Insertion Loss (IL) and isolation at 2.7 GHz are −0.17 dB and −33 dB, respectively. This design consumes 145 uA from supply voltage range of 1.65 V to 1.95 V and occupies 440 × 472 µm2 of die area.

A low power-integrated temperature sensor interface circuit

This paper constructs and simulates the interface circuit of a temperature sensor based on SMIC 0.18 [Formula: see text]m CMOS. The simulation results show that when the power supply voltage is 1.8 V, the chopper op-amp gain is 89.44 dB, the low-frequency noise is 71.83 nV/Hz,[Formula: see text] and the temperature coefficient of the core temperature sensitive circuit is 1.7808 mV/[Formula: see text]C. The sampling rate of 10-bit SAR ADC was 10 kS/s, effective bit was 9.0119, SNR was 59.3256 dB, SFDR was 68.7091 dB, and THD was −62.5859 dB. The measurement range of temperature sensor interface circuit is −50[Formula: see text]C[Formula: see text]C, the relative temperature measurement error is ±0.47[Formula: see text]C, the resolution is 0.2[Formula: see text]C/LSB, and the overall average power consumption is 434.9 [Formula: see text]W.

Design and Experimental Analysis of Charge Recovery for Piezoelectric Fan

The piezoelectric (PE) fan is widely adopted in the field of microelectronics cooling due to its advantages of high reliability and good heat dissipation characteristics. However, PE fans driven by conventional circuits suffer from plenty of energy loss. To save energy, we propose an inductor-based charge recovery method and apply it to the driving circuit for the PE fan. Two inductor-based driving circuits, a single inductor-based driving (SID) circuit and a double inductor-based driving (DID) circuit are compared. The SID circuit has a simple structure and a slightly higher energy-saving rate, while the DID circuit introduces no additional oscillations and is more stable. The experimental results show that when the supply voltage changes, both circuits have a relatively stable energy-saving rate, which is about 30% for the SID circuit and 28% for the DID circuit. Moreover, the proposed circuits enjoy the same driving capacity as the conventional circuit, and the driven fan has the same cooling performance.