Single Chip Mote

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a natural evolution of computing. CMOS technology enabled the network of computers that provided a platform for creating social networks. We are just seeing the early stages of another transition point in technology and entering into a new era where computing, sensing, and communication is essentially becoming disposable. The microsystem serves as a platform that allows us to embed wireless connectivity into everyday objects or serves as a brain for walking and flying microrobots. The lifetime, robustness, profile, and cost of these microsystems play a critical role to enable these emerging applications. Therefore, a single chip mote hardware platform is developed to address these unmet needs from the current existing hardware platforms. The system-on-chip (SoC) is architected from the bottom-up to meet the new use case and performance requirements of energy constrained environments with limited energy capacity e.g. batteryless operation from harvested energy or operation from printed batteries. The project seeks to reduce the active radio power by a factor of 10, reduce the overall system cost and profile of a microsystem by eliminating external components (e.g. crystal frequency reference) that are typically needed for a fully functioning wireless sensor node.

Researchers: 

  • Osama Khan
  • David Burnett
  • Lydia Lee
  • Filip Maksimovic
  • Alex Moreno Belmares
  • Brad Wheeler

Advisors: 

  • Kristofer S.J. Pister
  • Ali M. Niknejad