Analog pre-processing has been shown to be energy efficient in a wide variety of low-power applications. Reprogrammable analog devices have leveraged this energy efficiency and applied it to a wider application space, but they still require accurate and stable bias currents for proper operation. For single-application devices, it is sufficient to create temperature compensation schemes that apply to a single bias current. But for reprogrammable or reconfigurable platforms which can be used in a variety of applications, temperature compensation must work well over a large range of potential bias currents and for a large number of different components. In this paper, we present temperature compensation for floating-gate transistors in a reconfigurable system which improves performance over a wide range of currents and temperatures.

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.