Sila Deniz Calisgan’s PhD Dissertation Defense

“ADVANCEMENTS ON ZERO STANDBY POWER MEMS SENSORS”

Abstract:

Due to the fast development of the internet of things, and unattended wireless sensor networks, the number of connected devices worldwide is expected to increase exponentially in the future. In order to maintain such large networks of physical and virtual objects, there is a need for sensors, actuators and devices with dimensions and power consumption that are orders of magnitude smaller than the state-of-the-art. Currently no existing technology could enable the implementation of large-scale wireless sensor networks in remote locations due to the prohibitive cost associated with installation and maintenance. The fundamental technical challenge lies in the continuous power consumption of state-of-the-art sensor technologies: Commercially available sensors are not smart enough to identify targets of interest without consuming any power and rely on active electronics to detect and discriminate signal of interest. Therefore, they consume power continuously to monitor the environment even when there is no relevant data to be detected, which results in a short battery lifetime limited to very few months. This dissertation presents improvements on a new class of zero-power microsystems that fundamentally break the paradigm, with zero-power consumption, until awakened by a specific physical signature. This approach is applied to multiple sensing modalities. In particular, I have experimentally demonstrated zero-power wireless sensors triggered by different physical and chemical quantities such as: infrared radiation; radio frequency signals; acoustic signals and volatile organic chemicals. The capabilities of the zero-power sensors result in a nearly unlimited duration of operation, with a groundbreaking impact on the proliferation of the internet of things.

Committee:

Prof. Matteo Rinaldi (Advisor)
Prof. Marilyn Minus
Prof. Srinivas Tadigadapa
Prof. Zhenyun Qian