Low-Power Reconfigurable Sensing Circuitry for the Internet-of-Things Paradigm

Abstract

With ubiquitous wireless communication via Wi-Fi and nascent 5th Generation mobile communications, more devices-both smart and traditionally "dumb"-will be interconnected than ever before. This burgeoning trend is referred to as the Internet-of-Things. These new sensing opportunities place a larger burden on the underlying circuitry that must operate on finite battery power and/or within energy-constrained environments. New developments of low-power reconfigurable analog sensing platforms like field-programmable analog arrays (FPAAs) present an attractive sensing solution by processing data in the analog domain while staying flexible in design. This work addresses some of the contemporary challenges of lowpower wireless sensing via traditional application-specific sensing and with FPAAs. A large emphasis is placed on furthering the development of FPAAs by making them more accessible to designers without a strong integrated-circuit background-much like FPGAs have done for digital designers.