uWatt Computing -Application-Driven Circuits and Architectures for Wireless Sensor Devices

Recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in embedded wireless sensor networks with applications ranging from warehouse inventory tracking to medical and defense applications. With this growing interest in a seemingly limitless application space, development of computing devices for these networks will be an important growth area for the semiconductor industry. Embedded wireless sensor networks have several important attributes that require special attention to device design.These include the need for inexpensive, long-lasting, highly reliable devices coupled with minimal performance requirements. We seek to explore the potential for reliable, ultra-low-power computing and to leverage a multi-disciplinary approach encompassing an understanding of sensor network applications’ computational and communication requirements with novel low-power circuits and architectures.