Advanced CMOS Integrated Circuit Design and Application

The recent development of various application systems and platforms, such as 5G, B5G, 6G, and IoT, is based on the advancement of CMOS integrated circuit (IC) technology that enables them to implement high-performance chipsets. In addition to development in the traditional fields of analog and digital integrated circuits, the development of CMOS IC design and application in high-power and high-frequency operations, which was previously thought to be possible only with compound semiconductor technology, is a core technology that drives rapid industrial development. This book aims to highlight advances in all aspects of CMOS integrated circuit design and applications without discriminating between different operating frequencies, output powers, and the analog/digital domains. Specific topics in the book include: Next-generation CMOS circuit design and application; CMOS RF/microwave/millimeter-wave/terahertz-wave integrated circuits and systems; CMOS integrated circuits specially used for wireless or wired systems and applications such as converters, sensors, interfaces, frequency synthesizers/generators/rectifiers, and so on; Algorithm and signal-processing methods to improve the performance of CMOS circuits and systems

Millimeter-Scale and Energy-Efficient RF Wireless System

This dissertation focuses on energy-efficient RF wireless system with millimeter-scale dimension, expanding the potential use cases of millimeter-scale computing devices. It is challenging to develop RF wireless system in such constrained space. First, millimeter-sized antennae are electrically-small, resulting in low antenna efficiency. Second, their energy source is very limited due to the small battery and/or energy harvester. Third, it is required to eliminate most or all off-chip devices to further reduce system dimension. In this dissertation, these challenges are explored and analyzed, and new methods are proposed to solve them. Three prototype RF systems were implemented for demonstration and verification. The first prototype is a 10 cubic-mm inductive-coupled radio system that can be implanted through a syringe, aimed at healthcare applications with constrained space. The second prototype is a 3x3x3 mm far-field 915MHz radio system with 20-meter NLOS range in indoor environment. The third prototype is a low-power BLE transmitter using 3.5x3.5 mm planar loop antenna, enabling millimeter-scale sensors to connect with ubiquitous IoT BLE-compliant devices. The work presented in this dissertation improves use cases of millimeter-scale computers by presenting new methods for improving energy efficiency of wireless radio system with extremely small dimensions. The impact is significant in the age of IoT when everything will be connected in daily life.PHDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147686/1/yaoshi_1.pd

Modulation Techniques for Biomedical Implanted Devices and Their Challenges

Implanted medical devices are very important electronic devices because of their usefulness in monitoring and diagnosis, safety and comfort for patients. Since 1950s, remarkable efforts have been undertaken for the development of bio-medical implanted and wireless telemetry bio-devices. Issues such as design of suitable modulation methods, use of power and monitoring devices, transfer energy from external to internal parts with high efficiency and high data rates and low power consumption all play an important role in the development of implantable devices. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on various modulation and demodulation techniques such as amplitude shift keying (ASK), frequency shift keying (FSK) and phase shift keying (PSK) of the existing wireless implanted devices. The details of specifications, including carrier frequency, CMOS size, data rate, power consumption and supply, chip area and application of the various modulation schemes of the implanted devices are investigated and summarized in the tables along with the corresponding key references. Current challenges and problems of the typical modulation applications of these technologies are illustrated with a brief suggestions and discussion for the progress of implanted device research in the future. It is observed that the prime requisites for the good quality of the implanted devices and their reliability are the energy transformation, data rate, CMOS size, power consumption and operation frequency. This review will hopefully lead to increasing efforts towards the development of low powered, high efficient, high data rate and reliable implanted devices

Ultra Low Power Circuits for Internet of Things and Deep Learning Accelerator Design with In-Memory Computing

Collecting data from environment and converting gathered data into information is the key idea of Internet of Things (IoT). Miniaturized sensing devices enable the idea for many applications including health monitoring, industrial sensing, and so on. Sensing devices typically have small form factor and thus, low battery capacity, but at the same time, require long life time for continuous monitoring and least frequent battery replacement. This thesis introduces three analog circuit design techniques featuring ultra-low power consumption for such requirements: (1) An ultra-low power resistor-less current reference circuit, (2) A 110nW resistive frequency locked on-chip oscillator as a timing reference, (3) A resonant current-mode wireless power receiver and battery charger for implantable systems. Raw data can be efficiently transformed into useful information using deep learning. However deep learning requires tremendous amount of computation by its nature, and thus, an energy efficient deep learning hardware is highly demanded to fully utilize this algorithm in various applications. This thesis also presents a pulse-width based computation concept which utilizes in-memory computing of SRAM.PHDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144173/1/myungjun_1.pd

Recent Advances in Neural Recording Microsystems

The accelerating pace of research in neuroscience has created a considerable demand for neural interfacing microsystems capable of monitoring the activity of large groups of neurons. These emerging tools have revealed a tremendous potential for the advancement of knowledge in brain research and for the development of useful clinical applications. They can extract the relevant control signals directly from the brain enabling individuals with severe disabilities to communicate their intentions to other devices, like computers or various prostheses. Such microsystems are self-contained devices composed of a neural probe attached with an integrated circuit for extracting neural signals from multiple channels, and transferring the data outside the body. The greatest challenge facing development of such emerging devices into viable clinical systems involves addressing their small form factor and low-power consumption constraints, while providing superior resolution. In this paper, we survey the recent progress in the design and the implementation of multi-channel neural recording Microsystems, with particular emphasis on the design of recording and telemetry electronics. An overview of the numerous neural signal modalities is given and the existing microsystem topologies are covered. We present energy-efficient sensory circuits to retrieve weak signals from neural probes and we compare them. We cover data management and smart power scheduling approaches, and we review advances in low-power telemetry. Finally, we conclude by summarizing the remaining challenges and by highlighting the emerging trends in the field