In wireless communication there is commonly much unnecessary communication made in directions not pointing towards the recipient. Normally omni directional antennas are being used which sends the same amount of energy in all directions equally. This waste of energy reduces the lifetime of battery powered units and causes more traffic collisions than necessary. One way of minimizing this wasted energy and traffic collisions, is to use another type of antenna called “smart antenna”. These antennas can use selectable radiation patterns depending on the situation and thus drastically minimize the unnecessary energy waste. Smart antennas also provide the ability to sense the direction of incoming signals which is favorable for physical layout mapping such as orientation. This thesis presents the prototyping of a new type of smart antenna called the SPIDA smart antenna. This antenna is a cheap to produce smart antenna designed for the 2.4 GHz frequency band. The SPIDA smart antenna can use sixty-four different signal patterns with the control of six separate directional modes, amongst these patterns are six single direction patterns, an omni-directional signal pattern and fifty-six combi-direction patterns. The thesis presents complete building instructions, evaluation data and functional drivers for the SPIDA smart antenna.

Significant advanced development in the field of communication has led many designers and healthcare professionals to look towards wireless communication for the treatment of dreadful diseases. Implant medical device offers many benefits, but design of implantable device at very low power combines with high data rate is still a challenge. However, this device does not rely on external source of power. So, it is important to conserve every joule of energy to maximize the lifetime of a device. Choice of modulation technique, frequency band and data rate can be analyzed to maximize battery life. In this thesis work, system level design of FSK and QPSK transmitter is presented. The proposed transmitter is based on direct conversion to RF architecture, which is known for low power application. Both the transmitters are designed and compared in terms of their performance and efficiency. The simulation results show the BER and constellation plots for both FSK and QPSK transmitter.

In recent years, there has been a growing need for Successive Approximation Register (SAR) Analog-to-Digital Converter in medical application such as pacemaker. The demand for long battery life-time in these applications poses the requirement for designing ultra-low power SAR ADCs. This thesis work initially investigates and compares different structures of SAR control logics including the conventional structures and the delay line based controller. Additionally, it focuses on selection of suitable dynamic comparator architecture.  Based on this analysis, dynamic two-stage comparator is selected due to its energy efficiency and capability of working in low supply voltages. Eventually, based on these studies an ultra-low power 10-bit SAR ADC in 65 nm technology is designed. Simulation results predict that the ADC consumes 12.4nW and achieves an energy efficiency of 14.7fJ/conversion at supply voltage of 1V and sampling frequency of 1kS/s. It has a signal-to-noise-and-distortion (SINAD) ratio of 60.29dB and effective-number-of-bits (ENOB) of 9.72 bits. The ADC is functional down to supply voltage of 0.5V with proper performance and minimal power consumption of 6.28nW.

In this thesis, a Static Random Access Memory generator has been designed and implemented. The tool can generate memories of different sizes. The number of words that can be stored can be chosen among powers of 2 and the number of bits per word can be up to 48. The focus of the thesis was to find an adequate structure for the generated memories depending on the size, and develop a memory generator that implements the structures, which has been thoroughly done. The single circuits used in the generated memories can be substituted with better circuits as well as adapted to other processes. All circuits apart from a block decoder circuit have been developed. The memory generator was not supposed to automatically produce a complete layout, and some manual interventions on the memories generated by the tool are necessary. The tool requires to be developed further to minimise this manual intervention on the generated memories. The complete memories generated have not been tested because of their complexity, but tests on circuits as well as many parts of the memories have been carried out. During the thesis work, a large amount of tasks had to be carried out and a lot of issues had to be dealt with, which has been a problem. The tool used for the implementation has powerful features for both analog and digital electronic design, but has stability problems with large designs, which has been a big obstacle in this work.

In this master thesis, a behavioral VHDL model of a 1k Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm has been improved, first to make it synthesizable and second to obtain a low power consumption. The purpose of the thesis has not been to focus on the FFT algorithm itself or the theory behind it. Instead the aim has been to document and motivate the necessary modifications, to reach the stated requirements, and to discuss the results. The thesis is divided into sections so that the design flow closely can be followed from the initial FFT, down to the final architecture. The two major design steps covered are synthesis and power simulation. The synthesis process has been the most time consuming part of the thesis. The synthesis tool Cadence Ambit PKS was used. Throughout the synthesis, the modifications and solutions will be discussed and comparisons are continuously made between the different solutions and the initial FFT. The best solution will then be the starting point in the next design step, which is simulation of the design with respect to power consumption. This is done by using a simulation tool from Synopsys called NanoSim. Also here, every solution is tested and compared to each other, followed by a concluding discussion. The technology used to implement the design is a 0.35um CMOS process.

A dual-mode second-order Multirate Multibit Sigma Delta (MM-SD) modulator is implemented in a 90nm digital CMOS process for application in the baseband path of RF receivers. Low power consumption is achieved through a new integrator structure and a dedicated timing scheme along with aggressive capacitor scaling in the second stage of the modulator loop. Fabricated prototype achieves 68.6dB peak Signal-to-Noise and Distortion ratio (SNDR) in the 200 kHz GSM band and requires 1.1mA of total current from a 1.5V supply. This dual-mode design also achieves 42.8dB SNDR in the 1.94 MHz WCDMA band with only 1.9mA of total current consumption.

Multiple trends in computer architecture are beginning to collide as process technology reaches ever smaller feature sizes. Problems with managing power, access times across a die, and increasing complexity to sustain growth are now blocking commercial products like the Pentium 4. These problems also occur in the embedded system space, albeit in a slightly different form. However, as process technology marches on, today's high-performance space is becoming tomorrow's embedded space. New techniques are needed to overcome these problems. In this thesis, we propose a novel architecture called SoftCache to address these emerging issues for embedded systems. We reduce the on-die memory controller infrastructure which reduces both power and space requirements, using the ubiquitous network device arena as a proving ground of viability. In addition, the SoftCache achieves further power and area savings by converting on-die cache structures into directly addressable SRAM and reducing or eliminating the external DRAM. To avoid the burden of programming complexity this approach presents to the application developer, we provide a transparent client-server dynamic binary translation system that runs arbitrary ELF executables on a stripped-down embedded target. One drawback to such a scheme lies in the overhead of additional instructions required to effect cache behavior, particularly with respect to data caching. Another drawback is the power use when fetching from remote memory over the network. The SoftCache comprises a dynamic client-server translation system on simplified hardware, targeted at Intel XScale client devices controlled from servers over the network. Reliance upon a network server as a ``backing store' introduces new levels of complexity, yet also allows for more efficient use of local space. The explicitly software managed aspects create a cache of variable line size, full associativity, and high flexibility. This thesis explores these particular issues, while approaching everything from the perspective of feasibility and actual architectural changes.

The main objective of this research is to develop a pervasive wire sharing technique that can be easily applied across the entire range of on-chip interconnects in a very large scale integration (VLSI) system. A wave-pipelined multiplexed (WPM) routing technique that can be applied both intra-macrocell and inter-macrocell interconnects is proposed in this thesis. It is shown that an extensive application of the WPM routing technique can provide significant advantages in terms of area, power and performance. In order to study the WPM routing technique, a hierarchical approach is adopted. A circuit-level, system-level and physical-level analysis is completed to explore the limits and opportunities to apply WPM routing to current VLSI and future gigascale integration (GSI) systems. Design, verification and optimization of the WPM circuit and measurement of its tolerance to external noise constitute the circuit-level analysis. The physical-level study involves designing wire sharing-aware placement algorithms to maximize the advantages of WPM routing. A system-level simulator that designs the entire multilevel interconnect network is developed to perform the system-level analysis. The effect of WPM routing on a full-custom interconnect network and a semi-custom interconnect network is studied.

A micromachined magnetic field sensing system capable of measuring the direction of the Earths magnetic field has been fabricated, measured, and characterized. The system is composed of a micromachined silicon resonator combined with a permanent magnet, excitation and sensing coils, and a magnetic feedback loop. Electromagnetic excitation of the mechanical resonator enables it to operate with very low power consumption and low excitation voltage. The interaction between an external magnetic field surrounding the sensor and the permanent magnet generates a rotating torque on the silicon resonator disc, changing the effective stiffness of the beams and therefore the resonant frequency of the sensor. MEMS-based mechanically-resonant sensors, in which the sensor resonant frequency shifts in response to the measurand, are widely utilized. Such sensors are typically operated in their linear resonant regime. However, substantial improvements in resonant sensor performance can be obtained by designing the sensors to operate far into their nonlinear regime. This effect is illustrated through the use of a magnetically-torqued, rotationally-resonant MEMS platform. Platform structural parameters such as beam width and number of beams are parametrically varied subject to the constraint of constant small-deflection resonant frequency. Nonlinear performance improvement characterization is performed both analytically as well as with Finite Element Method (FEM) simulation, and confirmed with measurement results. These nonlinearity based sensitivity enhancement mechanisms are utilized in the device design. The complete magnetic sensing system consumes less than 200 microwatts of power in continuous operation, and is capable of sensing the direction of the Earths magnetic field. Such low power consumption levels enable continuous magnetic field sensing for portable electronics and potentially wristwatch applications, thereby enabling personal navigation and motion sensing functionalities. A total system power consumption of 138W and a resonator actuation voltage of 4mVpp from the 1.2V power supply have been demonstrated with capability of measuring the direction of the Earths magnetic field. Sensitivities of 0.009, 0.086, and 0.196 [mHz/(Hz and #903;degree)] for the Earths magnetic field were measured for 3, 4, and 6 beam structures, respectively.

Because IC (Integrated Circuit) has some good features like: little, low power consumption, and high stable, so it already popularly applied to our daily life. Operation is one of the main functions of IC, and now operate function achieve in digital mode of many IC products. Although digital circuits have many advantages, but we live in the analog world, natural signals are all analog. Digital circuits can¡¦t direct process analog signals, and therefore we have a requirement of analog-to-digital converter. As time goes by, IC technology has made great progress; digital circuits have faster process ability, and we also require a high speed analog-to-digital converter. Besides, in order to achieve higher picture quality and clearer voice, we also require a high resolution analog-to-digital converter. For portable products, the power consumption also needs to take into account. As mentioned above, I will implement a high speed, high resolution and low power analog-to-digital converter. In this thesis, the circuits are designing with TSMC.18£gm 1P6M CMOS process and 1.8V of supply voltage. The speed and resolution of ADC are 100Ms/s and 12bits individually. The pipelined coupling with 1.5bit/stage constitutes the main architecture of analog-to-digital converter. The dynamic comparator is used for lower power. Finally, the output codes are translated by digital correction circuit. Keywords: ADC, Analog-to-Digital Converter, pipeline, low power, amplifier, comparator.