CAREER: CSR Ultra Low Power Architectures for Wearable Computing

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Wearable health monitoring systems offer tremendous potential to improve our lives, yet a number of hurdles must be cleared before they become a reality. The processors and architectures that enable this technology demand a large amount of energy, requiring sizable batteries. The ultimate objective of this CAREER research is to create programmable architectures which require no battery and can rely on energy harvesting techniques. To achieve this objective, we seek to reduce power consumption of the processing units by more than two orders of magnitude. This power reduction is accomplished through novel, transformative methodologies to compose and configure programmable, ultra low power, granular decision-making architectures. New algorithms, tightly coupled with signal processing for power reduction in communication blocks are investigated. Research methods to activate and deactivate sensors with the granular decision making architecture attempts to further reduce the power consumption. The methodologies are validated and refined using two clinical case studies.This project has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of health monitoring practice and medical research, empowering numerous applications that are not currently feasible. Growing demand for health care monitoring applications requires students, engineers and health care professionals to design, develop, deploy and operate wearable systems. This project provides a multidisciplinary platform to realize the educational objectives of developing wearable computers, involving high school students and teachers as well as undergraduate and graduate students. Outreach programs are offered through short courses and lectures to local undergraduate societies (SWE, Honors and IEEE), K-12 students, health-care professionals, and local industries.