SHF: Medium: Power-Adaptive, Event-Driven Data Conversion and Signal Processing Using Asynchronous Digital Techniques

这项研究解决了越来越多的需求，需要非常低功耗和高质量的微电子系统，可以持续获取和处理信息，一旦它变得可用。这种数据采集和实时信号处理被广泛应用，例如环境传感器网络（由太阳能电池供电或通过使用振动能量收集能量），以及用于假肢或用于连续诊断和监测的可植入或可摄取的生物医学设备。在这些应用程序中，新信息通常不频繁地以不规则和不可预测的间隔生成。这种基于事件的性质要求我们对如何监测和处理这些信号进行彻底的重新思考。传统的同步（即时钟）数字技术，使用固定速率操作来评估数据是否已经改变，是一个糟糕的匹配，经常导致高功耗。相反，这项研究旨在提供可行的“基于事件”的系统：不是由时钟控制，而是由每个事件的到来控制。这种连续时间的数据采集保证了显著的功率和能量降低，灵活地支持各种信号处理协议和编码，高质量的输出信号，以及对未来微电子技术的优雅可扩展性。异步（即无时钟）数字逻辑技术，非常适合这项工作，与连续时间数字信号处理相结合，使这项任务成为可能；这两个领域都是在国家科学基金会的支持下由主要研究人员进行的。一系列的硅芯片将被设计和充分评估，最终形成一个完全可编程的、事件驱动的数据采集和信号处理系统，该系统可以用作各种实际应用的测试平台。预计这项工作将产生广泛的影响。由此产生的芯片和方法将为能源资源稀缺的广泛应用提供重大的实际好处，例如生物医学电子，传感器网络和便携式通信设备，这些设备必须在长时间内使用小型电池。芯片的开发将通过与生物医学工程方面的专家同事的密切磋商，以及通过研究人员的努力，朝着这些应用方向发展。与美国微电子公司的密切联系。此外，该研究有望为超低功耗微电子系统提供基础性的新进展，这可能对电力电子和新型机械振动控制系统等不同领域产生影响。最后，这项工作的结果将广泛传播给研究界，以促进和推进这些技术的实际应用，并促进这一领域的进一步研究和教育，包括通过将其纳入哥伦比亚大学和其他一流大学的课程。

This research addresses an increasing demand and need for very low power and high-quality microelectronic systems that can continuously acquire and process information, as soon as it becomes available. Such data acquisition and real-time signal processing are used in a wide range of applications, such as environmental sensor networks (powered by solar cells or by energy harvesting using vibrational energy), and implantable or ingestible biomedical devices for prosthetics or for continuous diagnostics and monitoring. In these applications, new information is often generated infrequently, at irregular and unpredictable intervals. This event-based nature calls for a drastic re-thinking of how these signals are monitored and processed. Conventional synchronous (i.e. clocked) digital techniques, which use fixed-rate operation to evaluate data whether or not it has changed, are a poor match, often leading to high power consumption. This research aims instead to provide viable "event-based" systems: controlled not by a clock but rather by the arrival of each event. Such continuous-time data acquisition promises significant power and energy reduction, flexible support for a variety of signal processing protocols and encodings, high-quality output signals, and graceful scalability to future microelectronic technologies. Asynchronous (i.e. clockless) digital logic techniques, which are ideally suited for this work, are combined with continuous-time digital signal processing, to make this task possible; both of these areas have been researched by the principal investigators under prior NSF support. A series of silicon chips will be designed and fully evaluated, culminating in a fully programmable, event-driven data acquisition and signal processing system, which can be used as a testbed for a wide variety of real-world applications.This work is expected to have broad impact. The resulting chips and methodology will provide significant practical benefits in widely-used applications where energy resources are scarce, such as in biomedical electronics, sensor networks and portable communications devices, which must operate on a small battery for a long lifetime. The chip development will be directed towards these applications through close consultation with expert colleagues in biomedical engineering, and through the investigators? existing close ties with US microelectronics companies. In addition, the research is expected to provide fundamental new advances in ultra-low-power microelectronics systems, which can have an impact on such diverse areas as power electronics and new types of control systems for mechanical vibration control. Finally, the results of this work will be extensively disseminated to the research community, to promote and advance the practical use of these techniques, as well as to promote further research and education in this area, including through its incorporation into curricula at Columbia University and other leading universities.