IC Design for Low Power Wireless Sensing

Brian Otis
University of Washington

Monday, January 5, 2009 at 1:00PM
54-134 Engineering IV Building
Refreshments Served

Abstract: Emerging applications of wireless sensors require new levels of system integration, functionality, and lifetime. Challenges include the integration of robust low power wireless links, sensor signal processing, and system miniaturization. For the most part, it boils down to power. I'll discuss our work in circuit design techniques utilizing MEMS devices to reduce the power consumption and footprint of wireless transceivers. Recent work in low power analog sensor interfaces will be presented. Some exploratory work on energy harvesting and power conversion circuitry will be discussed. Throughout, I'll describe a few applications in the medical community that will benefit from these advancements.

Biography: Brian Otis received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the faculty of the University of Washington as Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2005, where he directs the Wireless Sensing Lab. His research interests include ultra-low power integrated circuit design for enabling previously impossible sensing and communication paradigms. He has previously worked at Intel Corporation and Agilent Technologies. Dr. Otis is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Part II. He was the recipient of the 2003 U.C. Berkeley Seven Rosen Funds award for innovation and was co-recipient of the 2002 ISSCC Jack Raper Award for Outstanding Technology Directions Paper.