Microwatt Radio for Self-Sustaining Wireless Sensor Networks

This project proposes a cross-layer design approach to develop ultra-low-power radios to enable self-sustaining wireless sensor networks (WSNs), that is, WSN powered by energy harvesting. The proposed approach optimizes the overall power consumption by exploiting mutual dependence of system parameters at different system layers. The objective is to achieve a radio with an estimated power consumption 1-3 orders less than the typical values in current designs, which makes energy harvesting feasible for self-sustaining WSNs.



The project will have close collaboration with three academic laboratories: i) the RF and Energy Microsystem Technology Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem And Information Technology (SIMIT), China; ii) the MEMS group, Department of Micro-and Nanotechnology, Technical University of Denmark (DTU); and iii) the Lab For Analog Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits, San Francisco State University (SFSU), USA. The three laboratories have extensive experience in WSN protocols, MEMS energy harvesters and ultra-low-power circuits, respectively.