Scavenging thermal-noise energy for implementing long-term self-powered CMOS timers

Liang Zhou, Pikul Sarkar, Shantanu Chakrabartty

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

One of the major challenges in remotely powered sensors is that events being monitored can not be time-stamped due to the unavailability of a continuously active timer or system clock. Implementing such a timer would require access to a perennial source of energy, which for a structural health monitoring (SHM) application, could easily span several years. In this paper, we present a novel approach to implement self-powered timers that only requires presence of ambient thermal energy. The operational principle of the timer is based on the physics of trap-assisted electron transportation in floating-gate capacitors which yields leakage currents down to 10-21A. Using a differential architecture the proposed timer compensates for the effects of temperature variations during the timer read-out. In this paper we validate the proof-of-concept using measurement results obtained from different timer topologies which have been prototyped in a 0.5μm CMOS process.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2013 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2013
Pages2203-2206
Number of pages4
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Event2013 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2013 - Beijing, China
Duration: May 19 2013May 23 2013

Publication series

NameProceedings - IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems
ISSN (Print)0271-4310

Conference

Conference2013 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, ISCAS 2013
Country/TerritoryChina
CityBeijing
Period05/19/1305/23/13

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Scavenging thermal-noise energy for implementing long-term self-powered CMOS timers'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this