Wireless, RF & Smart Dust

Research that includes:

  • Tuneable RF components: capacitors, inductors, transformers
  • RF microrelays
  • High frequency MEMS resonators: devices, structures, and processes

BPN939: Analysis and Benchmarking of MEMS-Based Super-Regenerative Receivers

Kevin H. Zheng
2022

The recent MEMS-based super-regenerative receiver our group demonstrated used a tunable 65-nm-capacitive-gap transduced wine-glass disk resonator to receive and demodulate OOK signals with only 490uW of power consumption. This work aims to analyze the sensitivity and maximum bit rate for this class of receiver in the presence of adjacent-channel blockers and measure these characteristics for receivers implemented using resonators with sub-40-nm gaps.

Project suspended for Fall 2022

BPN848: Wireless Neural Sensors: Robust Ultrasonic Backscatter Communication in the Brain

David Piech
2021

Brain-machine interfaces provide an artificial conduit to send information to and from the brain, and modulate activity in the brain. These systems have shown great promise in clinical, scientific, and human-computer interaction contexts, but the low reward/risk ratio of today’s invasive neural interfaces has limited their use to an extremely niche clinical patient population. It has been shown that ultrasonic backscatter communication can enable the sensing and stimulation of neural activity with extremely small wireless implants, which can both improve performance and reduce risk....

BSAC's Best: Fall 2020 Oral Presentation Winners Announced

September 24, 2020

BSAC would like to thank all of the researchers who presented their research during BSAC's Fall 2020 Research Review, September 21-23.

BSAC Industrial Members voted for their favorite oral presentations and the results are in. Please join us in congratulating the winners of the Fall 2020 Best of BSAC honors, Mallika Bariya and Daniel Teal!

...

BPN866: Wide-Bandwidth UHF Bandpass Filters

Kieran Peleaux
QianYi Xie
2021

This project aims to explore the physical limitation of Capacitive- Piezoelectric resonator and Capacitively-transduced resonator for the realization of wide-bandwidth bandpass filters at UHF and oscillators.

BPN814: UHF Capacitive-Gap Transduced Resonators With High Cx/Co

Kieran Peleaux
2021

The project explores methods by which the Cx/Co of UHF capacitive- gap transduced resonators might be increased to above 5% while maintaining Qs 10,000.

BPN795: An Implantable Microsensor for Cancer Surveillance

Kyoungtae Lee
2021

We aim to create an implantable dosimeter for the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory’s proton beam therapy treatment. Currently, there is no closed loop solution to verify the dose treated to a specific in vivo location. By using ultrasound as a communication platform, we aim to enable real time in vivo dose readings to physicians. This can lead to better-localized irradiation treatment of cancer, and minimize irradiation to vital, healthy tissues. This technology could also be calibrated for specific military applications.

Project ended: 05/01/2021

BPN902: Jumping Microrobots for Low-Cost Asteroid Prospecting

Daniel Teal
2021

We are exploring potential applications of our jumping microrobots in space. While our 1.9x1.2x0.06cm robot has previously jumped 3mm (and can theoretically achieve 3cm or much more) in Earth gravity, the same actuator would reach escape velocity in the 6 micro-g gravity of the Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Bennu, the target of NASAs current OSIRIS-REx sample return mission. This implies it is possible to build a thousand-robot swarm of 1cm^3 1g robot capable of hopping around and measuring an NEA. This is useful because such a swarm is simultaneously lighter (by orders of magnitude) and more...

KSJP10: Ultra-Low Energy Circuits for Distributed Sensor Networks (Smart Dust)

Brett Warneke
Brian Leibowitz
Mike Scott
2003

The goal of this project is to develop an ultra-low energy integrated circuit that will form the core of a self-contained, millimeter scale sensing and communication platform for a massively distributed sensor network. The integrated circuit will contain an integrated sensor, an A/D converter, microprocessor, SRAM, communications circuits, and power control circuits. The IC, together with the sensors, will operate from a power source integrated with the platform.

Project end date: 07/30/03

KSJP26: RF Dust for Human Gestural Interpretation

Benjamin Cook
2003

The goal of this project is to create an intuitive and natural interface mapping human expressions to the digital domain. Applications are limitless, but the focus of this project will be interpreting accelerations produced by human gestures as musical signals to allow realtime musical performance. Aquisition of these high resolution acceleration signals is achieved by square millimeter size MEMS sensing devices.

Project end date: 08/20/03

RTH/TJK2: As-Grown SiGe Thin Film with Low Stress and Low Strain Gradient

Blake C.-Y. Lin
2003

Monolithic integration of MEMS devices with driving and controlling electronics is advantageous for improving performance and lowering cost. Polycrystalline silicon-germanium (poly-SiGe), which has mechanical and electrical properties similar to poly-Si, is a promising candidate for the structural-layer material of post-CMOS integration of MEMS because poly-SiGe can be deposited at much lower temperatures than poly-Si. While low-resistivity poly-SiGe can be easily obtained utilizing in-situ p-type (i.e. boron) doping during deposition, poly-SiGe films deposited at temperatures lower...