Floating-gate transistors have found many applications in both analog and digital systems due to their ability to serve as long-term non-volatile memory. When used in programmable analog applications, the charge on the floating gates must be set very precisely, thereby necessitating precise and steady high voltages to generate programming conditions. In this work, we present a regulated charge pump with extremely low output ripple (2charge pump was fabricated in a 0.35μm standard CMOS process. While operating from a 2.5V supply, this charge pump generates regulated voltages up to 10V.

Floating-gate transistors have been used in many systems to add non-volatile memory. By storing a precise amount of charge on the electrically isolated floating gate, these devices can be used in analog applications as programmable current sources. However, manipulating the stored charge must be done with voltage drops that exceed the supply voltage. In this paper, we present a method to program floating-gate transistors using negative voltages - a desirable characteristic that has been previously inhibited by the difficulties of operating selection circuitry at voltages below the substrate potential. We circumvent the need to have selection circuitry operating at negative voltages by using indirectly programmed floating-gate transistors and a circuit that linearizes the programming currents. We also present a charge pump to generate the necessary negative voltages for programming in this configuration.

To meet the demanding requirements in the growing area of wireless sensing applications, some sensing platforms have included low-power application-specific hardware to process the sensor data for compression and pre-classification of the relevant information. While this additional hardware can reduce the overall power consumption of the system, a unique hardware solution is required for each application. To diminish this burden, we will demonstrate a reconfigurable analog/mixed-signal sensing platform. At the hardware-level, this platform consists of a reconfigurable integrated circuit containing many commonly used circuit components that can be connected in any configuration to perform sensor interfacing and ultra-low-power signal processing. At the software level, this platform provides a framework for abstracting the underlying hardware. We will demonstrate how our platform allows a developer to create applications ranging from standard sensor interfacing techniques to more complicated intelligent pre-processing and wake-up detection, without the necessity of circuit-level expertise.

The requirements of many wireless sensing applications approach, or even exceed, the limited hardware capabilities of energy-constrained sensing platforms. To achieve such demanding requirements, some sensing platforms have included low-power application-specific hardware---at the expense of generality---to pre-process the sensor data for reduction to only the relevant information. While this additional hardware can save power by reducing the activity of the microcontroller and radio, a unique hardware solution is required for each application, which presents an unrealistic burden in terms of design time, cost, and ease of integration. To diminish these burdens, we present a reconfigurable analog/mixed-signal sensing platform in this work. At the hardware-level, this platform consists of a reconfigurable integrated circuit containing many commonly used signal-processing blocks and circuit components that can be connected in any configuration. At the software level, this platform provides a framework for abstracting this underlying hardware. We demonstrate how to quickly develop new applications on this platform, ranging from standard sensor interfacing techniques to more complicated intelligent pre-processing and wake-up detection. We also demonstrate how to integrate this platform with commonly used wireless sensor nodes and embedded-system platforms.