Low Power and Small Area Mixed-Signal Circuits: ADCs, Temperature Sensors and Digital Interfaces

May 15, 2023

Yuting Shen defended her PhD thesis at the department of Electrical Engineering on May 12th.

Image: iStockphoto

For her PhD thesis, Yuting Shen looked at the creation more power-efficient and area-effective circuits for various cost-constrained applications. Specifically, her thesis looks at analog to digital conversion, temperature sensor correction, and digital communication. New techniques and design approaches are proposed and verified by means of prototype chip implementations.

In her thesis, Shen first considers a high-resolution Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) which can shape mismatch errors without input range loss, thereby improving power and area efficiency.

Next, Shen looks at an input range extension technique for low-to-medium resolution ADCs. Thanks to this method, the absolute noise requirement is relaxed, and thus power and area can be saved. After that, efficient on-chip correction techniques for temperature sensors are discussed.

Final prototype

The final prototype contains a dynamic resistive temperature sensor with analog correction of offset, gain, and non-linearity. The resulting design is low power and compact, suitable for IoT (Internet of Things) ambient temperature monitoring applications.

Finally, simplex and full duplex digital communication interfaces are presented by Shen which achieve energy-efficient data transmission with adaptability to data rate and load capacitance.

Overall, Shen’s work pushes the boundaries of power and area cost for mixed-signal circuits, resulting in more efficient circuit implementations for various applications.

Title of PhD thesis: Low Power and Small Area Mixed-Signal Circuits: ADCs, Temperature Sensors and Digital Interfaces. Supervisors: Pieter Harpe and Eugenio Cantatore.