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Electronics
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Ultra-Low Power Circuits Design
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Ultra-Low Power Circuits Design

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Circuit and Signal Processing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2021) | Viewed by 13168

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Alessandro Bertacchini

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering — DISMI—University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via G.Amendola, 2, 42122 Reggio Emilia, Italy
Interests: ultralow power systems design; energy harvesting; energy-aware HW/SW co-design; autonomous smart sensors; embedded systems design; IoT and IIoT; power management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,  

Ultra-low power consumption, energy harvesting, and wireless connectivity are the enabling technologies allowing realizing smart devices implementing new functions like active safety enhancement, remote diagnostics, or prognostics to predict faults and prevent costly operation breakdowns. These functions are rapidly gaining interest in many application fields, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), smart agriculture, Industry 4.0, and automotive. On one side, wireless connectivity has allowed realizing miniaturized devices that are able to work in harsh environments and that can be placed in locations not accessible with traditional solutions.

On the other side, wireless devices are usually battery-powered, and their miniaturization forces them to deal with smaller energy storage devices that can significantly limit the lifetime of the devices and consequently lead to an unacceptable battery replacement rate for most of the applications.

Nevertheless, and even as the advancements in energy harvesting techniques give rise to a range of applications, the minimization of the power consumption is still the most important electronics design constraint. 

In this context, the topics of this Special Issue include but are not limited to:       

  • Advancements in energy-aware design techniques;       
  • Simulation tools and modeling of ultra-low power systems;
  • Design methodologies of ultra-low power systems;
  • Real applications of ultra-low power solutions showing a remarkable reduction of the overall power consumption compared with traditional solutions;
  • Ultra-low power hardware architectures for energy-constrained devices;
  • High-efficiency power management circuits;
  • High-efficiency power conversion circuits;
  • Context-aware power management circuits for low power applications and energy-neutral devices;
  • Ultra-low power front-end electronics;
  • Ultra-low power communication interfaces;
  • Smart wake-up and self-startup circuits for ultra-low power applications;
  • Smart energy storage circuits or systems;
  • Ultra-low power sensors and energy-neutral devices;
  • High-efficiency energy harvesting circuits for low power applications.

Dr. Alessandro Bertacchini
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Power management circuits
  • Power conversion circuits
  • Ultralow power circuits and systems
  • Energy-aware design
  • Energy-neutral devices
  • Smart sensors
  • Hardware-software co-design
  • Energy harvesting

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 2312 KiB  
Article
Ultra-Low-Voltage Inverter-Based Operational Transconductance Amplifiers with Voltage Gain Enhancement by Improved Composite Transistors
by Luis Henrique Rodovalho, Orazio Aiello and Cesar Ramos Rodrigues
Electronics 2020, 9(9), 1410; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9091410 - 01 Sep 2020
Cited by 34 | Viewed by 3728
Abstract
This paper proposes topological enhancements to increase voltage gain of ultra-low-voltage (ULV) inverter-based OTAs. The two proposed improvements rely on adoption of composite transistors and forward-body-biasing. The impact of the proposed techniques on performance figures is demonstrated through simulations of two OTAs. The [...] Read more.
This paper proposes topological enhancements to increase voltage gain of ultra-low-voltage (ULV) inverter-based OTAs. The two proposed improvements rely on adoption of composite transistors and forward-body-biasing. The impact of the proposed techniques on performance figures is demonstrated through simulations of two OTAs. The first OTA achieves a 39 dB voltage gain, with a power consumption of 600 pW and an active area of 447 μm2. The latter allies the forward-body-bias approach with the benefit of the independently biased composite transistors. By combining both solutions, voltage gain is raised to 51 dB, consuming less power (500 pW) at the cost of an increased area of 727 μm2. The validation has been performed through post-layout simulations with the Cadence Analog Design Environment and the TSMC 180 nm design kit, with the supply voltage ranging from 0.3 V to 0.6 V. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-Low Power Circuits Design)
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17 pages, 3000 KiB  
Article
Effects of the Target on the Performance of an Ultra-Low Power Eddy Current Displacement Sensor for Industrial Applications
by Alessandro Bertacchini, Marco Lasagni and Gabriele Sereni
Electronics 2020, 9(8), 1287; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9081287 - 11 Aug 2020
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3037
Abstract
The demand for smart, low-power, and low-cost sensors is rapidly increasing with the proliferation of industry automation. In this context, an Ultra-Low Power Eddy Current Displacement Sensor (ULP-ECDS) targeting common industrial applications and designed to be embedded in wireless Industrial Internet of Things [...] Read more.
The demand for smart, low-power, and low-cost sensors is rapidly increasing with the proliferation of industry automation. In this context, an Ultra-Low Power Eddy Current Displacement Sensor (ULP-ECDS) targeting common industrial applications and designed to be embedded in wireless Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) devices is presented. A complete characterization of the realized ULP-ECDS operating with different metallic targets was carried out. The choice of the considered targets in terms of material and thickness was inspired by typical industrial scenarios. The experimental results show that the realized prototype works properly with extremely low supply voltages, allowing for obtaining an ultra-low power consumption, significantly lower than other state-of-the-art solutions. In particular, the proposed sensor reached the best resolution of 2 µm in case of a carbon steel target when operated with a supply voltage of 200 mV and with a power consumption of 150 µW. By accepting a resolution of 12 µm, it is possible to further reduce the power consumption of the sensor to less than 10 µW. The obtained results also demonstrate how the performances of the sensor are strongly dependent on both the target and the demodulation technique used to extract the displacement information. This allowed for defining some practical guidelines that can help the design of effective solutions considering application-specific constraints. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-Low Power Circuits Design)
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14 pages, 9663 KiB  
Article
A 920-MHz Dual-Mode Receiver with Energy Harvesting for UHF RFID Tag and IoT
by Peiqing Han, Zhaofeng Zhang, Yajun Xia and Niansong Mei
Electronics 2020, 9(6), 1042; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9061042 - 24 Jun 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4465
Abstract
A low-power dual-mode receiver is presented for ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. The reconfigurable architecture of the tag is proposed to be compatible with low-power and high-sensitivity operating modes. The read range of RFID system and the lifetime of the tag [...] Read more.
A low-power dual-mode receiver is presented for ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification (RFID) systems. The reconfigurable architecture of the tag is proposed to be compatible with low-power and high-sensitivity operating modes. The read range of RFID system and the lifetime of the tag are increased by photovoltaic, thermoelectric and RF energy-harvesting topology. The receiver is implemented in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS process and occupies an active area of 0.65 mm × 0.7 mm. For low-power mode, the tag is powered by the rectifier and the sensitivity is −18 dBm. For high-sensitivity mode, the maximum PCE of the fully on-chip energy harvester is 46.5% with over 1-μW output power and the sensitivity is −40 dBm with 880 nW power consumption under the supply voltage of 0.8 V. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Ultra-Low Power Circuits Design)
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