Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister

Pister Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

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...

Design of Moderate Resolution High Speed Pipeline ADCs in Fine Line Technologies

Dimitrios Katsis
Bernhard E. Boser
Kristofer S.J. Pister
2006

In this work the issues involved in designing pipeline Analog to Digital Converters in fine line technologies are discussed. In particular, we focus on the design of the interstage amplifier within the pipeline. We compare open loop voltage and current mode approaches to amplifier design and suggest solutions to common current mode design problems. Further, we propose...

Design and Analysis of Closed-loop Controlled Parallel-Plate Electrostatic MicroGrippers

Patrick Breckow Chu
Kristofer S.J. Pister
1994

This work describes the design and analysis of a class of sub-millimeter scale grippers. These electrostatically-driven devices are fabricated from polysilicon using an IC-based surface micromachining process and have been designed to handle objects...

CMOS Based Chemical Sensors

Dharmesh Bhalchandra Jani
Kristofer S.J. Pister
1995
Detection of chemical species using solid state sensors is of great practical importance. The niche for chemical microsensors exists in places where continuous measurement of a chemical concentration is required from a number of locations. Microsensors...

CotsBots: An Off-the-Shelf Platform for Distributed Robotics

Sarah Bergbreiter
Kristofer S.J. Pister
David Culler
2004

This thesis presents the CotsBots – inexpensive and modular robots built entirely from commercial off-the-shelf components. These robots provide a convenient platform on which to investigate algorithms, cooperation and distributed sensing in large (greater than 50) robot networks. Each robot is small (13cm x 6.5cm base) and costs approximately $200 in quantity. Each is equipped with on-board processing, radio communication, and a base platform...

Crystal-Free Wireless Communication with Relaxation Oscillators and its Applications

David C. Burnett
Kristofer S.J. Pister
Ali M. Niknejad
Lance J. Kriegsfeld
2019

For the last decade, the size of complete 2.4GHz wireless modules containing everythingbut power have stagnated at ~1cm x 1cm. This is despite continued advances in semiconductorprocesses due to components needed by the core communication IC. Breaking this size barrier (which also sets a power and cost barrier) by eliminating all off-chip components is the goal of the Single-Chip Mote project, of which this dissertation is a part. The major componentsto be eliminated are antenna, battery, and crystal...