This project investigates the challenges in mixed signal platforms, such as those embedded in biomedical electronics, micro-systems, sensor networks and wireless communications, from both device and systems perspective. Demonstrators will be developed that cover generic sensor interface/data acquisition, passive telemetry, wireless body area network, wireless sensor networking and wireless wide area networks. The achievements will benefit other Nano-Tera projects focusing on the sensor/actuator side of microsystems, as well as wireless communications SoCs that will challenge the state-of-the-art in integration level, versatility and sophistication of nano CMOS systems.
2. Outline
Background
Motivation
Sensor Interface and Data Acquisition
Body Area Network and Short Range Communication
Wide Area Network and Cellular Link
Summary
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3. Great Expectations
Impressive Advances in
• Microsystems Technology
• Wireless Communications
• Internet Connectivity
Have Set the Scene for
the Next Big Thing
The Internet of Things
or M2M Communication
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4. Great Expectations
Global Interest
• Chinese companies already
moving fast
• Chinese universities not far
behind
• National Priority and Support
Giving us a run for our
money
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6. Sophisticated Electronics Needed to Bind
Sensors & Actuators Into Useful Systems
12 May 2011 Platform Circuit Technology Underlying Heterogenous Nano & Tera Systems
7. Few Can Rely on Off-the-Shelf Components
Most Require Full Custom Integrated Circuits
Cochlear Implant
Retina Implant
Defibrillator & Electronics
Cochlear Impl. Electronics
12 May 2011 Platform Circuit Technology Underlying Heterogenous Nano & Tera Systems
8. The Underlying Technologies
Sensors & Systems
Sensors Based on Micro & Nano Technologies
CSEM WL Sensor Node
ETH Implantable CSEM ISM RF SoC
Passive Telemetry IC
Nano devices above passivation?
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9. The Underlying Platform - ICs for Medical
Data Acquisition and Communication
Data Acquisition
Sensor Interface
Instrumentation amplifier (sub-µV offset, low noise)
Signal conditioning, data conversion, calibration
DSP and Control Loop Algorithm or Circuitry
Energy Harvesting and Supply Regulation
Short Range Wireless
Incorporating wake-up radio for low duty cycle operations
Broad Range Wireless
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10. Project Partners
ETH Q. Huang, T. Burger
EPFL C. Deholain
CSEM C. Enz
3 Main Swiss
Institutions in
IC Research
battery powered nodes
remote powered nodes
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12. BAN Scenario and System View
WBAN WWAN
battery powered nodes
remote powered nodes
Contaldo, Banerjee, Enz for Placitus November Meeting Slide 12
13. Data Acquisition and Remote Powering
INTERFACE ELECTRONICS
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14. Passive Telemetry By ETH
Implant Low-power, single-chip, fully-implantable micro
transponder
Wireless powering and communication
Base-Unit
Accurate long-term monitoring
Transmitter Independent of time and location for diagnosis and
therapy
Low risk of infection (no external catheter)
Monitoring setup
Systole Sensor Data
Oscillator
Supply Acquisition
Circuit
PPM-Output
Magnetoresistive A
Sensor LPN
Diastole D
Transponder Sensor
PPM-AM reflected RF
Magnet
Voltage
Rectifier Startup Modulator Regulator
Artery
t RF/DC-Converter
Antenna
Sensor-transponder-system Block diagram of microtransponder ASIC
12 May 2011 Platform Circuit Technology Underlying Heterogenous Nano & Tera Systems
15. Implantable Passive Telemetry By ETH
Chip area: 4.359 mm x 5.245 mm
2 μm 40 V BiCMOS technology
Measured characteristics of the micro transponder
RF Carrier 27/40 MHz (ISM)
Baud Rate 1 kBaud
Modulation PPM-AM
S/N Ratio 39.7 dB
Equiv. I/P-Offset 170 μV
THD (@ f=3.737 Hz, Vpp=5.8 0.16%
mV)
Power Consumption 0.5 mW
Power Consumption of Data 250 μW @ 3V
Acquisition Unit
12 May 2011 Platform Circuit Technology Underlying Heterogenous Nano & Tera Systems
16. Multiple Purpose Sensor Interface (EPFL)
Bio-electric Heart
Sensors &
Brain Activity PH; Glucose;
K+, Ca2+, Mg2+;
Bio-medical
CRP;
ISET Sensors
Motion
Detect
Thermal Couples Temperature
Accelerometer ECG-electrode
pH ISFET sensor
Sensor Type ensor
Sensor Type
Supply Voltage 1.5V 1.7-3.6V
Current
1nA 70μA 11μA Contact Resistance 100KΩ
Consumption
Sensitivity -56mV / pH 56 count/ g Signal Bandwidth 300Hz
Sampling Rate - 100/400Hz 40/10Hz Accuracy 10 Bits
Power Consumption 13nW @ pH7 ≤175μW ≤27μW
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17. Wireless Powering of Implants in Human Body
The control unit which is placed on the body can remotely
powered the sensors and communicate with them
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18. Remote Powering By EPFL
Magnetic Coupling
d
Base Station 2 Implant
Input C1 Rectifier Output
AC PA M12 Reg. DC
voltage voltage
L1 L2 C2 CL RL
Electromagnetic Coupling
d
2
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19. Personal and Body Area Network
SHORT RANGE WIRELESS
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30. • GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Prototype 2 modulation types
IC #1 15 coding schemes (CS)
1mm2
• Low cost channel equalizer
• Flexible Viterbi decoder
Prototype
IC #2
2mm2
• Supports also Level‐A E‐EDGE 4 modulation types, 23 CS
• Efficient solution for 16QAM/32QAM channel equalization
• Flexible Viterbi and Turbo decoder with shared memories
Integrated Systems Laboratory 30
31. IC #1 IC #2
Core size 1.0mm2 2.0mm2 Achieve throughput
Max clock frequency fmax 172MHz 151MHz requirements with
Leakage current 0.49mA 0.6mA ftarget=40MHz
Continuous burst reception (8 time slots)
Avg power at ftarget=40MHz and VDD=1.2V
Scale supply voltage
GPRS CS1 (GMSK) 2.4mW 6.8mW
EDGE MCS9 (8‐PSK) 5.2mW 11.2mW
Less than 5mW
E‐EDGE DAS12 (32QAM) ‐‐‐ 19.9mW
in fastest mode
Integrated Systems Laboratory 31
32. Turbo Decoder ASICs for
WCDMA‐HSDPA and LTE
• International Solid‐State Circuit Conference 2008 • International Solid‐State Circuit Conference 2010
• Journal of Solid‐State Circuits 2009 • Journal of Solid‐State Circuits 2011
33. Our ISSCC ISSCC ISSCC
Units
Early termination
chip 2003 2002 2002
Less than 10mW
UMTS
UMTS, UMTS, in high SNR regimes
Standard UMTS (cdma
HSDPA HSDPA
2000) 60
10.8Mb/s
CMOS 0.13 0.18 0.18 0.25 μm
Power [mW]
Die size 1.2 14.5 9.0 8.9 mm²
fixed VDD and fclk
Max. Θ
18.6 24 4.1 5.5 Mb/s
@ 6 iters
Power 57.8 956 292 mW
n.a.
@ (iters) (10.8) (10.8) (2.0) Mb/s 10
scaled VDD and fclk
Energy nJ/b
0.7 11.1 14.6 6.9
Efficiency /iter 0.5 Eb/N0[dB] 4.5
Smallest die size, lowest power consumption
and best energy efficiency published so far
Integrated Systems Laboratory 33
34. • First-generation LTE terminals will target ~100Mb/s
• Maximum LTE throughput is 326.4Mb/s in downlink
Integrated Systems Laboratory 34
35. • Low-power turbo decoding for HSPA+ requires 57.8mW
• 8 -28 x higher power consumption is not tolerable
Integrated Systems Laboratory 35
36. • 8 x radix-4 MAP
decoder cores
• Master/slave Batcher
network for efficient
address mapping
• Implementation loss
within 0.14dB SNR
Integrated Systems Laboratory 36
38. power measurements conducted at T=300K for block‐size 3200
• LTE maximum throughput requires 503mW
• 100Mb/s milestone requires only 68.6mW
Our ASIC achieves 10x higher throughput at the same
power required by a state‐of‐the‐art HSDPA turbo decoder
Integrated Systems Laboratory 38
39. Summary
Internet of Things Builds on Synergy of Three Major Fields
Circuit Technology Platform Is a Pillar for Medical Electronics
The Placitus Consortium Aims To Create Low Power and
Highly Integrated Solutions
Data Acquisition, Remote Powering, Short Range Radio and
WAN module Are Among the Focuses
Early Results Are Promising
Much Is Still To Be Done
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40. Soft‐In Soft‐Out MMSE Parallel
Interference Cancellation
• European Solid‐State Circuit Conference 2010
• Journal of Solid‐State Circuits 2011
• Swisscom Award 2010
41. 63mm
7.8mm
63mm
2x2 exhaustive 3x3 exhaustive 4x4 exhaustive
search detector search detector
7.8mm
search detector 64-QAM 64-QAM
64QAM
1.0mm
1.0mm
• Complexity grows exponentially in the number of Tx antennas
• Example: IEEE 802.11n WLAN would require evaluation of up to
0.5 quadrillion (0.5∙1015) candidate vectors per second
• Smarter way: Sphere Decoder (STS‐SD) still very complex
Integrated Systems Laboratory 41
42. soft‐info
SISO
best
Iteratively exchange
channel
MIMO iterations soft‐information
decoder
y
detector
a‐priori info tremendous gain
100
SISO STS‐SD
• Parallel Interference Cancellation SISO MMSE‐PIC
(PIC) cancels spatial interference soft‐output
iterative
10‐1 MIMO MIMO
decoding decoding
• MMSE‐PIC close to (optimum)
Sphere Decoder performance 7dB
10‐2
• MMSE‐PIC significantly less
complex 10‐3
2dB
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Integrated Systems Laboratory 42
43. • Supports four Tx antennas
MMSE filter & • Compliant to 802.11n WLAN
soft information
PIC
1.225mm
Clock frequency 560MHz
matrix
pre- inversion Core area 1.5mm2
process
Data rate 750Mb/s
I/O Power consumption 190mW
1.225mm
Integrated Systems Laboratory 43
47. Switzerland Is a Leader
in ICs for Microsystems and Wireless
Three teams each a leader internationally
Skill sets complementary to each other
EPFL & ETH in data acquisition and energy harvesting
CSEM in modeling, short range wireless and protocol
ETH in wide range wireless and sensor interface
Combined to cover complete technology platform for
miniaturized medical and other systems
Concentration of know-how unrivalled by other countries
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48. Excellent Track Record
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49. In the Grand Scheme of Things
The Technology Haves and Have-Nots
Access to semiconductor manufacturing deprived in Europe
Asian universities better funded in microelectronics
Stakes are too high to be complacent
Knowledge-Based Economy More Critical than Ever
Labor abundance favors Asia in manufacturing
CH/EU must retain/create high value-add industries
No Wealth Generation without Products
No products without a system (Lab sensors alone don’t suffice)
Circuit/system technology platform underlying it all
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50. More Than Just Wearable
Integrated Circuits Serve Many Prolific Sectors
Medical Electronics
Global annual revenue ~ 125bn USD
Growing at 7.2% per annum in next 5 years
Cellular Communications Hardware
Global annual revenue ~ 210bn USD
Swiss GDP
490bn USD in 2008
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51. Holding Our Own
In Research and Entrepreneurship
Amongst Top Ten at Chip Olympics
Accepted Papers at ISSCC 2010
75% by the proposers
100
10
1
At forefront in tech transfer
100 Spin-Off Companies Per Year
10
1
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52. What Circuit Technology Can Do
- Making A Difference at Top Tier
ETH Startup Supplies RF Transceiver To Tier-
One Mobile Phone Vendors
ETH Startup Sold GPS Platform to Qualcomm
ETH Startup Supplies Home Networking Kits
Nokia Samsung
BlueEarth Samsung
6788 SGH-F480i
TCL: T36 Konka: E3
Samsung: NC10 Dell: Inspiron Mini 10 Hasee: Q130T
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53. Demonstrators
Universal Data Acquisition System for (Remotely
Powered) Sensor Networks
Applicable to a wide range of sensors
With continued collaborations with sensor groups
Short Range Wireless System on a Chip for Body Area
Networks
Relay acquired sensor info to a more powerful WL link
Wide Area Wireless System on a Chip
Relay information to monitoring centers
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54. Sensor Interface and Data Acquisition
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55. Some of the Challenges
• Large CM Voltage
• Differential Offset
• Low noise instrumentation
• Multi channel capability
• Low power drain
Z Z Z Z Zs2 Z i1 Z i 2
Vd Vc s s i Z s s1 Zi
Z Zi 2
Zi s 2
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56. Multi Channel EEG Interface by ETH
12 May 2011 Platform Circuit Technology Underlying Heterogenous Nano & Tera Systems