The single chip micro mote 3C (SCµM-3C) was designed to be a wireless sensor node on a chip capable of joining a network as a bare die with a standards compliant BLE and 802.15.4 mesh communication radio while fully self-contained and functional with no external components. SCµM-3C’s deep level of integration allows users to connect a battery, program using a touchless optical programmer and be ready to connect to the network. As a sensor, SCµM-3C was shown to have a ~1 cm accurate 3D localization estimate and measure temperatures from 0 to 100C with <2 C of precision. Advancements in communications as a crystal-free radio include SCµM-3C joining an 802.15.4 mesh network running OpenWSN, transmitting BLE beacon packets to a cell phone, and RF temperature compensation via both initial calibration and calibration-free in-use algorithms. Since Crystal-Free radios are susceptible to frequency drifts due to voltage, it was recently demonstrated that the on-chip 2.4 GHz local oscillator (LO) could be compensated for voltage droop while powered from a solar cell with an 805 capacitor under 200 mW/cm2 of irradiation. Without compensation the RF frequency would vary by 2.6 MHz during packet transmission resulting in a loss of 100B of the payload. With frequency drift compensation that frequency varied less than 300KHz and the full length 125B 802.15.4 packet was received by an off-the-self component radio. The next goals are redesigning SCµM and integrating a 90GHz RADAR, and a µV ADC for sensing.
Project currently funded by: Industry Sponsor