Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister

Pister Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

SPICE Analysis of a Micro Gyro and Mixed Analog-Digital Sensor Interface Circuit

Amit Burstein
Chand R. Viswanathan
Kristofer S.J. Pister
William H. Kaiser
1994
MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) is a fast growing field both in the commercial companies and in the universities. Different design tools such as VEM and MAGIC are available for the design of both surface and bulk micromachining...

Serial Assembly of Microstructures

Subramaniam Venkatraman
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Carlo H. Séquin
2006

This thesis presents serial pick and place assembly of microstructures, fabricated in a simple single mask SOI process, as an approach for the manufacture of complicated microstructures. Two techniques for pick and place microassembly and design of microparts which can be used with either of these two assembly approaches are presented. The techniques are designed to be simple and robust so that they can be extended to an automated assembly-...

RF Ranging for Location Awareness

Steven Michael Lanzisera
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Jan M. Rabaey
Paul K. Wright
2009
Wireless sensor networks provide an opportunity to improve performance in areas ranging from energy efficiency to industrial processes to scientific research. Many applications require awareness of sensor location, but autonomously determining device location has proven to be challenging. This localization problem can be divided into two parts: measuring relationships between nodes, and then using these relationships to estimate location. Most work on t...

Resonant Circuits for MEMS Interfaces

Baris Cagdaser
Bernhard E. Boser
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Liwei Lin
Roger T. Howe
2005
This work describes the use of resonant circuits for electrostatic actuation of MEMS devices with low voltage drive electronics. Resonant drive also offers a solution for position sensing and generates a sense signal without the need for a separate sense capacitor. Moreover, an inherent force feedback mechanism limits the drive voltage as the drive capacitor becomes larger and stabilizes parallel-plate actuators beyond the pull-in point of the...

Reliability and Acknowledgements in Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks

George William Shaw
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Alberto L. Sangiovanni-Vincentelli
2008

All wireless sensor networks with greater than 0% packet delivery rate (PDR) can be made 100% reliable—when given unbounded time to achieve successful packet delivery. Real systems, however, don't have unbounded time or resources. Reliability is the probability that a packet will be successfully delivered within the required time bound. The delivery reliability requirement and time bound are determined from the application-dependent delivery MTBF at which...

Poly-Crystalline Silicon Carbide Passivated Capacitive MEMS Strain Gauge for Harsh Environments

Babak Jamshidi
Albert P. Pisano
Liwei Lin
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2008
This dissertation describes the design and fabrication of a high-resolution capacitive sensor encapsulated in poly-crystalline silicon carbide. This sensor can continuously measure the strain in the substrate under aggressive environments such as extreme ambient temperature, corrosive media and high-g shocks. This strain sensor has a sub-millimeter gauge length capable of precise assessment of strain fields. The device...

Mechanical Energy Storage for Self-Destructing Motes and Jumping Microrobots

Joseph Greenspun
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Vivek Subramanian
Liwei Lin
2018
Mechanical energy storage has been studied to enable a self-destructing mote and ajumping microrobot. Just as chemical energy stored in batteries can be used for a widearray of devices, so too can mechanical energy stored in beams. In this work various energystorage elements are designed, fabricated, and tested to create these MEMS systems. As privacy and data security become increasingly important, new means of keeping that data safe must be developed. A MEMS system has been created to allow a wirelessly enabled...

Monolithic Wireless Transceiver Design

Filip Maksimovic
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Ali M. Niknejad
Stephen D. Glaser
2020

Recently, there has been an increasing push to make everything wireless. In contrast to high-performance cellular communication, where the demand for enormous quantities of data is skyrocketing, these small wireless sensor and actuator nodes require low power, low cost, and a high degree of system integration. A typical CMOS system-on-chip requires a number of off-chip components for proper operation, namely, a crystal oscillator to act as an accurate frequency reference, and an antenna. The primary goal of this thesis...

Integrated Surface Micromachined Frame Microgyroscopes

Moorthi Palaniapan
Roger T. Howe
Albert P. Pisano
Roberto Horowitz
2002
In this work, two different integrated surface-micromachined z-axis vibratory rate gyroscopes are evaluated. Frame microgyroscopes using 'Inside Sense Outside Drive' suspension design were proposed and compared with 'Inside Drive Outside Sense' design. In the 'Inside Sense Outside Drive' frame design, the outer mass (...

Incremental Network Programming for Wireless Sensors

Jaein Jeong
Kristofer S.J. Pister
David E. Culler
2004

One problem of the current network programming implementation of TinyOS is that it takes much longer than the traditional in-system programming due to the slow radio connection. We extended the network programming implementation of TinyOS 1.1 release so that it can reduce the programming time using the program code history. The host program generates the difference of the two program images using the Rsync algorithm and it sends the difference to the sensor nodes as script messages. The sense nodes rebuild the program image based on the previous program version and the recived script...