Collaborative Research:CCSS:Low-ComplexityWireless Sensor Architectures Based on Asynchronous Processing

该合作研究的重点是高度小型化的低复杂度低功耗无线传感器的新设计原理及其分析。近年来，集成无线传感器已出现在广泛的应用，包括医疗保健，监控，智能建筑，减灾和环境监测。然而，作为用于测量机械应力的可植入生物电势传感器或潜水传感器的新应用需要现有最先进的传感器硬件的进一步小型化。作为额外的挑战，由于需要执行多信道感测，这些应用通常需要显著增加的传输数据速率。因此，这些方法需要设计非常低功耗的传感器硬件架构，以支持通过这些高速数据链路进行可靠和安全的传输。而不是研究传统的传感器架构，信号处理技术和前向纠错（FEC）策略，这些具有挑战性的要求的性能，所提出的研究的目标是发现和研究新的低复杂度异步通信和纠错策略，是专为这一类新兴的高度小型化的低功耗集成无线传感器。这项研究的结果有可能消除传统传感器硬件的基础上同步信号处理的功率和吞吐量的限制，从而使许多传感应用的显着进步。特别是，所提出的研究能够提供一个显着的变革性影响，许多其他应用采用低功耗调制方案，即使在传感器系统领域之外。该项目的另一个重要方面是教育计划，结合了PI的跨学科优势。这包括将研究成果整合到现有的课程中，学生交流，会议教程，以及开放访问拟议的传感器架构的所有细节。拟议的项目将通过采用电路设计，信号处理，编码，传播理论和实践的跨学科的方式。具体而言，一个系统的解决方案，集成的无线传感器将开发通过设计异步增量调制的传感器接口上的异步超宽带（UWB）的无线接口上的传输相结合，以广泛地降低传感器硬件的功耗。此外，为了确保传感器在有噪声的通信链路上以有保证的可靠性运行，分析了具有低复杂度编码的新的非二进制FEC方案，其数据符号由异步定时信息和脉冲符号组成。特别是，该项目的贡献是1）研究一种新型的异步传感器信号接口的开关电容器幅度采样电路的基础上的设计和性能; 2）调查有效的FEC解决方案的传感器基于异步数据调制的开放问题;和3）开发和分析一个异步无线电接口的基础上频移键控开关键控调制UWB数据传输。

This collaborative research focuses on novel design principles for highly miniaturized low-complexity low-power wireless sensors and their analysis.In recent years integrated wireless sensors have emerged in a wide range of applications including health care, surveillance, smart buildings, disaster mitigation, and environment monitoring. However, new applications as implantable bio-potential sensors or submersible sensors for measuring mechanical stress require further miniaturization of existing state-of-the-art sensors hardware. As an additional challenge, these applications often require a significantly increased transmission data rate due to the need to perform multichannel sensing. Consequently, these approaches require the design of very low-power sensor hardware architectures, which can support reliable and secure transmission over these high-speed data links. Rather than studying the performance of traditional sensor architectures, signal processing techniques, and forward error correction (FEC) strategies for these challenging requirements, the goal of the proposed research is find and study novel low-complexity asynchronous communication and error correction strategies that are tailored to this emerging class of highly miniaturized low-power integrated wireless sensors. The results of this study have the potential to remove the power and throughput limitations given by traditional sensor hardware based on synchronous signal processing, and thus to enable significant advances in many sensing applications. In particular, the proposed research is able to provide a significant transformative impact on many other applications employing low-power modulation schemes, even outside the field of sensor systems. Another important aspect of the project is the education plan that combines the cross-disciplinary strengths of the PIs. This includes the integration of the research results into existing curricula, student exchanges, conference tutorials, and open access to all details of the proposed sensor architectures.The proposed project will significantly advance the state-of-the-art in integrated low-power low-complexity high-data-rate wireless sensor design by employing ideas from circuit design, signal processing, coding, and communication theory and practice in an interdisciplinary fashion. Specifically, a systematic solution for integrated wireless sensors will be developed by devising asynchronous delta modulation on the sensor interface in combination with asynchronous ultra wideband (UWB) transmission on the wireless radio interface in order to extensively decrease the power consumption of the sensor hardware. Further, to ensure that the sensor operates with guaranteed reliability over the noisy communication link, new non-binary FEC schemes with low complexity encoding are analyzed, whose data symbols consist of both asynchronous timing information and pulse signs. In particular, the project contributions are 1) to study design and properties of a novel asynchronous sensor signal interface based on a switched-capacitor amplitude sampling circuit; 2) to investigate the open problem of efficient FEC solutions for sensors based on asynchronous data modulation; and 3) to develop and analyze an asynchronous radio interface based on frequency shift keying on-off keying modulation for UWB data transmission.