SHF: Small: Rapid Development of Adaptable RF Transceivers for IoT Applications via Built-in Self-Test and Calibration

快节奏的物联网领域需要快速开发硬件、固件和软件，通常都是由少数开发人员完成的。遗憾的是，目前的集成电路硬件设计实践不利于物联网领域的快节奏开发周期。通信硬件需要一大群设计师，他们花大部分时间调整他们的设计，使系统在制造差异的最坏情况下工作。小型物联网团队可能没有根据应用需求构建通信硬件所需的资源。该项目旨在通过创建一个提供硬件构建块库的创新平台来消除硬件开发障碍。意识到工程学领域的劳动力短缺，而且对STEM相关职业的兴趣在教育经历的早期就开始了，这个项目的K-12外展目标是激励和吸引初中生和高中生从事工程学。为了实现这一目标，PI将支持初中生通过虚拟硬件设计平台从事研究。学生们将合作开发物联网应用程序，并使用概念设计工具来开发硬件。这些项目还将在当地的初中和高中进行演示。作为该项目的一个结果，设计师将能够从库中即插即用地使用关键的硬件组件，而不需要深厚的设计专业知识。这些库模块将包括关键通信子系统的自适应功能，这将在制造步骤后自动微调硬件性能，从而消除原本常见的详细设计微调。为了实现关键通信电路的这种即插即用硬件设计，适配组件必须具有最小的侵入性、占地面积小、对于制造变化的健壮性，并且必须准确地达到指定物联网应用的性能目标。虽然这些要求似乎相互冲突，但这些目标将通过库块及其自调整组件的联合设计、使用相对信号分析来实现高精度以及使用内置分析模型来优化物联网规范的硬件性能来实现。

The fast-paced IoT domain requires rapid development of hardware, firmware, and software, usually all by a small number of developers. Unfortunately, current integrated circuit hardware design practices are not conducive to the fast-pace development cycle of the IoT domain. Communications hardware requires a large group of designers who spend the majority of their time tweaking their designs such that the systems work under worst case scenarios of manufacturing variations. A small IoT team may not have the resources necessary to build the communications hardware with respect to the application needs. This project aims to remove the hardware development roadblock by creating an innovation platform that provides a library of hardware building blocks. Realizing that there is a shortage of workforce in engineering, and interest in STEM related careers begins early in the educational experience, the K-12 outreach objective for this project is to inspire and engage the middle and high school student population in engineering. In order to achieve this goal, the PIs will support middle and high school students to engage in research via a virtual hardware design platform. The students will team up to develop an IoT application and use conceptual design tools to develop their hardware. These projects will also be demonstrated in local middle schools and high schools.As an outcome of this project designers will be enabled to plug-and-play the crucial hardware components from a library without requiring deep design expertise. These library blocks will include self-adaptation capabilities for critical communications subsystems, which will automatically fine-tune hardware performance after the manufacturing step, thereby removing the detailed design tweaks that are otherwise common. In order to enable such plug-and-play hardware design for the crucial communications circuits, adaptation components must be minimally invasive, present with a small footprint, must be robust with respect to manufacturing variations, and must accurately hit the performance target of the specified IoT application. While these requirements are seemingly in conflict, these goals will be achieved by co-design of the library blocks together with their self-tuning components, using relative signal analysis to achieve high accuracy, and using built-in analytical models to optimize the hardware performance with respect to the IoT specification.