I-Corps: Extremely compact, low-power sensing nodes that may fulfill the promise of smart dust

I-Corps：极其紧凑、低功耗的传感节点，可以实现智能灰尘的承诺

• 批准号: 2041569
• 负责人: Mircea Stan
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Virginia Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2023-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2041569&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Extremely; compact; low; power

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to explore applications of new wirelessly connected sensors. The proposed technology advances a an ultra-low-power sensor device for the Internet of Things (IoT), smart dust, or edge intelligence (EI) devices. Relative to current sensors, the proposed technology may create 100-fold improvements in the cost of thorough coverage and battery life, virtually eliminating the cost of battery replacement and sensor maintenance. Example applications in agriculture include preventive, cost-effective, and continuous monitoring of temperature, rainfall, wind direction, soil moisture, pests, and illness for informed decision-making. Other applications may include preventive/therapeutic healthcare, animal welfare, environmental monitoring, transportation, and industrial monitoring.This I-Corps project investigates translation of a novel system-on-chip (SoC) with end-to-end computing on asynchronous streams data-path that is composed of Asynchronous Sigma-Delta Modulators (ASDM) for acquiring sensor data, a computing-core for streams, a clock-less wireless interface and an analog memory. The key for the SoC power efficiency is the unique data representation - the ASDM maps analog data to asynchronous streams of 1s and 0s instead of digital numbers. The streams are sent to the computing-core composed of processing elements, such as multipliers and adders. A multiplier for streams may be implemented with a single AND gate and an adder with a 2:1 multiplexer, achieving savings in power and area of up to 90% compared with typical approaches.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是探索新的无线连接传感器的应用。 所提出的技术推进了用于物联网（IoT）、智能灰尘或边缘智能（EI）设备的超低功率传感器设备。相对于目前的传感器，所提出的技术可以在全面覆盖和电池寿命的成本上提高100倍，几乎消除了电池更换和传感器维护的成本。在农业中的应用实例包括对温度、降雨量、风向、土壤湿度、害虫和疾病进行预防性、成本效益和持续监测，以便做出明智的决策。 其他应用可能包括预防/治疗保健、动物福利、环境监测、运输和工业监测。这个I-Corps项目研究了一种新型的片上系统（SoC）的翻译，该片上系统具有异步流数据路径上的端到端计算，该数据路径由用于获取传感器数据的异步Sigma-Delta调制器（ASDM）、流计算核心、无时钟无线接口和模拟存储器。SoC电源效率的关键在于独特的数据表示-ASDM将模拟数据映射到1和0的异步流，而不是数字。流被发送到由处理元件（诸如乘法器和加法器）组成的计算核心。流的乘法器可以用一个与门和一个带2：1多路复用器的加法器来实现，与典型方法相比，节省了高达90%的功率和面积。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。