Dr. Ruonan Liu
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, UC Berkeley
BSAC Postdoctoral Researcher, Clark Nguyen Group
August 8, 2017 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall
Host: Michael Cable
The widespread expectation that autonomous sensor networks will fuel massively accessible information technology, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), comes with the daunting realization that huge numbers of sensor nodes will be required, perhaps approaching one trillion. Besides cost, energy will pose a major constraint in such a vision. High quality factor MEMS resonators are perfect candidates for low power electronics, especially resonant switches (resoswitches), which have demonstrated capability as all-mechanical receiver front-ends that detect and demodulate signals as low as -60dBm while consuming zero quiescent power. The key to attaining high quality signal reception and demodulation with zero quiescent power consumption derives from the use of heavily nonlinear amplification provided by mechanical impact switching of the resoswitch. This approach would be inconceivable in a conventional receiver due to performance degradation caused by nonlinearity, but becomes plausible by virtue of the RF channel-selection provided by the resonant behavior of the mechanical circuit. Similar technology also fueled the development of a real time clock (RTC) that can potentially operate on 5pW of power, 200,000 times lower than a typical commercially available RTC.
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