IoT devices become more and more popular which implies a growing interest in easily maintainable and battery-independent power sources, as wires and batteries are unpractical in application scenarios where billions of devices get deployed. To keep the costs low and to achieve the smallest possible form factor, SoC implementations with integrated energy harvesting and power management units are a welcome innovation.On-chip energy harvesting solutions are typically only capable of supplying power in the order of microwatts. A significant design challenge exists for the functional blocks of the IoT-SoC as well as for the power management unit itself as the harvested voltage has to be converted to a higher and more usable voltage. Simultaneously, the power management blocks have to be as efficient as possible with the lowest possible quiescent currents.In this paper, we provide a look at on-chip microwatt power management. Starting with the energy-harvesting from RF power or light, we then show state-of-the-art implementations of ultra-low power voltage references and ultra-low power low-dropout regulator (LDO) designs.
On the brink of introducing the fifth generation (5G) of cellular networks, the art of radio-frequency (RF) integrated circuit design has never seen such a wide spread of diverging requirements:On the one hand, ubiquitous sensor networks are mandating power budgets in the order of micro-watt. They should be constructed as energy-autonomous, wireless, low-cost sensor nodes. This demand is caused by massive deployment scenarios of billions of devices, which makes wires and batteries unpractical. As a result, the desire for the radio nodes to harvest their operational energy from the environment emerges.On the other hand, the recent and ongoing realization of gigabit-per-second capable cellular modems is driving hardware and power requirements to extremes. To overcome hardware limitations, introduced by analog impairments, digital correction and alignment algorithms are employed for compensation. These factors call for usage of expensive advanced CMOS technology nodes and increased utilization of digital signal processing techniques.In this paper, we recap ongoing trends and developments for ultra-low power and high-end transceiver (TRX) designs using CMOS technology nodes ranging from low-cost to highest performance.Keywords: RF; ultra-low-power; wireless architectures; transceiver; mixed-signal circuits; 5G Von Mikrowatt zu Gigabit: Herausforderungen beim Design moderner Funkübertragungssysteme.
Neben der Einführung der zellularen Mobilfunknetze der fünften Generation (5G) muss sich auch die integrierte HochfrequenzSchaltungstechnik einer noch nie dagewesenen Breite an unterschiedlichen Anforderungen stellen: Auf der einen Seite gibt es überall kabellose Sensornetzwerke, denen nur eine geringe Menge an Versorgungsleistung im MikrowattBereich zur Verfügung steht. Daher müssen die Chips in diesem Bereich energieautark und möglichst kostengünstig entwickelt werden. Aufgrund der zu erwartenden hohen Stückzahlen (Milliarden von unterschiedlichsten Sensoren für verschiedene Anwendungen) sind eine drahtgebundene Energieversorgung oder der Einsatz von Batterien in vielen Fällen praktisch unmöglich. Somit wird es für die Sensoren immer wichtiger, ihre Energieversorgung aus der Umgebung zu gewinnen (Stichwort Energy Harvesting).
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