Energy harvesting is becoming increasingly important in low-power applications where energy from the environment is used to power the system alone, or to supplement a battery. For example, pulse oximeter sensors inside helmets of road racing cyclists are powered by the sun. These sensors have become smaller and more practical without the limitation of a finite energy supply. Harvested energy from an energy transducer (solar, piezoelectric, etc.) must be maximized to ensure these devices can survive periods where environmental energy is scarce. The conversion process from the transducer to usable power for the device is not perfectly efficient. Specifically, the output voltage of a solar cell is a function of the light intensity, and by extension the load it powers. A small perturbation of the light source quickly diminishes the available power. The wasted power reduces the energy available for the application, and can be improved using an approach called maximum power point tracking (MPPT). This technique maximizes harvesting efficiency by dynamically impedance matching the transducer to its load. This report introduces the Maximum Efficient Solar Harvester (MESH), an MPPT algorithm tuned for a specific Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) application. MESH specifically controls the operation of the DC-DC converter in a solar power management unit (PMU). The control is done by monitoring the available light and feeding that information to choose the optimal operating point DC-DC converter. This operating point has a direct dependency on the overall efficiency of the system. For MESH to be practical, the cost and power overhead of adding this functionality must be assessed. Empirical results indicate that MESH improves the maximum efficiency of the popular Texas Instruments (TI) RF2500-SEH WSN platform by an average of 20%, which far exceeds the power overhead it incurs. The cost is also found to be minimal, as WSN platforms already include a large portion of the hardware required to implement MESH. The report was done in collaboration with Stephen Kobdish. It covers the software implementation and MESH architecture definition; Kobdish's companion report focuses on hardware components and the bench automation environment. / text

Wearable wireless sensor devices, which are implemented by deploying sensor nodes on objects, are widely utilized in a broad field of applica-tions, especially in the healthcare system for improving the quality of life or monitoring different types of physical data from the observed objects. The aim of this study is to design an in-home, small-size and long-term wearable fall detection system in wireless network by using barometric pressure sensing for elderly or patient who needs healthcare monitoring. This threshold-based fall detection system is to measure the altitude of different positions on the human body, and detect the fall event from that altitude information. As a surveillance system, it would trigger an alert when the fall event occurs so that to protect people from the potential life risk by immediate rescue and treatment. After all the performances evaluation, the measurement result shows that standing, sitting and fall state was detected with 100% accuracy and lying on bed state was detected with 93.3% accuracy by using this wireless fall detection system. Furthermore, this system with low power consumption on battery-node can operate continuously up to 150 days.

Ce mémoire de thèse est consacré à la mise en place d'un système opto-électronique générique basé sur une liaison toute optique bidirectionnelle de 10km. L'architecture étudiée et développée est dédiée à l'extension d'un observatoire câblé de fond de mer afin d'atteindre de nouvelles zones d'exploration. Les travaux de recherche rapportés dans ce manuscrit présentent la réalisation d'un démonstrateur, qui permet la récupération de données, issues d'un instrument connecté à un module opto-alimenté, via une seule fibre optique où transitent simultanément deux voies de données en bande C et la puissance optique d'alimentation (à 1480nm) égale à 33dBm permettant de récupérer 180mW électrique sur le module opto-alimenté.Le contexte de cette thèse de doctorat est présenté au travers d'un état de l'art sur les moyens utilisés pour l'observation des océans et sur les systèmes électroniques à faible consommation. Après un rappel des caractéristiques essentielles de l'architecture de la liaison optique préalablement établie, nous nous concentrons sur la structure opto-électronique qui a pour but d’assurer la communication entre l’observatoire et l’instrument déporté de l’extension. La définition du cahier des charges a abouti au choix du capteur (hydrophone), du débit des données (5Mbit/s) et du protocole de communication (SPI 3-fils) utilisé entre les deux modules opto-électroniques, chacun à une extrémité de la fibre optique. L'effort a été porté sur la conception d'un module opto-alimenté faible consommation (66mW) où s'intègre l'instrument. Tout au long de ce document, les choix technologiques retenus lors de la conception des deux modules opto-électroniques sont argumentés. Le banc d'essai du démonstrateur a permis de valider la conception de cette extension et d'évaluer la qualité de la transmission des données (BER inférieur à 10-6). Le fonctionnement d'un premier prototype destiné à être marinisé a été présenté au travers de la détection et de la transmission de signaux acoustiques générés en bassin d'essai. De manière à rendre le système encore plus générique, une solution alternative à base d'un FPGA, permettant l'utilisation d'une interface SPI 4-fils sans modifier la liaison optique a été présentée et validée. / This PhD thesis is devoted to the design of an opto-electrical and generic system which uses a 10km long all-optical and bidirectional link. The studied and developed system is dedicated to extend a current cabled seafloor observatory, in order to reach new exploration areas. The research work described in this thesis presents the development and the realization of a demonstrator. This later collects data from an instrument connected to its optically powered unit. The optical power supply (33dBm at 1480nm), which provides up to 180mW electrical for the optically powered unit, and the optical data in C band, are transmitted simultaneously through the same single optical fiber.The thesis context is first presented through an overview of ocean observation systems and low consumption electronic devices. After a brief review on the main characteristics of the optical architecture, we focused on the opto-electrical structure which permits the communication between the observatory and the remote instrument. The desired requirements have led us to the choice of the sensor (hydrophone), the data bit rate (5Mbit/s) and the communication protocol (SPI 3-Wire) used between both opto-electrical units, each one located at the both ends of the optical link. A special attention was devoted to the conception of the optically powered which must be low power consumption (66mW). All along this document, technical choices involved in the realization of both opto-electrical units are presented. We could evaluate the performance of the data transmission (BER less than 10-6) by using a demonstrator's test bench. Then, a first prototype designed for the ocean environment was presented through experimental measurements. Those tests were conducted in a test pool and have consisted in the detection of acoustic signals. In order to increase the range of compatible instruments, an alternative solution based on a FPGA was described and approved. This new design allows the SPI 4-Wire to be employed without any change of the current optical architecture.

La minimisation de la consommation d'énergie est primordiale lors de la conception de circuits. Cependant, il est nécessaire de s'assurer que cela ne compromette pas la sécurité des circuits. Et ce particulièrement face aux attaques physiques, les appareils mobiles étant des cibles idéales pour ces dernières.Ce travail vise à évaleur l'impact du body-biasing sur la résistance des circuits aux attaques laser. Ces techniques permettent d'ajuster dynamiquement le ratio consommation/performance d'un circuit en modifiant la tension de polarisation des caissons. Le manuscrit se découpe en quatre chapitres. Il commence par un état de l'art. Puis, le banc de test laser utilisé est présenté ainsi que le travail effectué pour permettre son automatisation et une première étude sur l'impact des impulsions laser de courte durée sur les mémoires SRAM. Le troisième chapitre rapporte les résultats d'une campagne d'injection de faute laser sur des mémoires soumises au body-biasing. Celle-ci permet de mettre en évidence une augmentation de la sensibilité au laser des circuits lorsque leur tension d'alimentation est réduite et que le Forward Body Biasing est utilisé. A partir de ces résultats, le dernier chapitre propose une méthode utilisant les capacités basse-consommation d'un microcontrôleur pour durcir un AES matériel. Ces travaux permettent ainsi de montrer que les techniques de réduction de la consommation peuvent constituer un risque sécuritaire potentiel si elle ne sont pas prises en compte correctement. Cependant, les capacités apportées au circuit dans ce cadre peuvent être détournées pour améliorer sa résistance aux attaques. / The increasing complexity of integrated circuits and the explosion of the number of mobile devices today makes power consumption minimisation a priority in circuit design. However, it is necessary to make sure that it does not compromise the security of sensitive circuits. In this regard, physical attacks are a particular concern, as mobile devices are ideal targets for these attacks.This work aims at evaluating the impact of body-biasing on circuit vulnerability to laser attacks. These methods allow to dynamically adjust the performance/consumption ratio of a circuit by modifying the bias voltage of the body. It is divided in four chapters. It begins by introducing cryptography, physical attacks and low power design methods. Then the test bench used during this thesis is described, as well as the developpement work done in order to allow its automation. Then an initial study of the impact of short duration laser pulses on SRAM memories is presented. The third chapter reports the results of a laser fault injection campaign on memories subjected to Forward Body-Biasing. The results show a sensitivy increase of the circuits when supply voltage is lowered and FBB is activated. Based on these results, the last chapter introduces a method using the body-biasing and voltage scaling capabilities of a microcontroller to harden a hardware AES embedded on the latter.In conclusion, this works shows that low-power design methods can induce additional security risks if they are not carefully taken into account. However the additional capabilities of the circuits intended for power consumption reduction can be used in a different way to enhance device resillience to attacks.

O câncer é um problema de saúde pública mundial. O Instituto Nacional do Câncer (INCA) estimou que no Brasil, no ano de 2015, 576 mil novos casos surgiram, representando a segunda maior causa de mortes por esta doença. Entre os tratamentos oferecidos para o câncer, podemos destacar a radioterapia, que utiliza fontes ionizantes para erradicar ou impedir a proliferação das células tumorais. Entretanto, o uso da radiação ionizante (R.I), pode acarretar danos às células não tumorais circunvizinhas ao tumor. Assim, tratamentos coadjuvantes que possam diminuir os efeitos deletérios da radiação são extremamente importantes. Neste contexto, o laser de baixa potência (LBP) surge como alternativa para modular a resposta das células frente à radiação ionizante. Sendo esse nosso objetivo, células de fibroblastos de gengiva humana (FMM1) e câncer de mama (MDA-MB-231) foram expostas as doses de 2,5 e 10 Gy e após 24 h receberam LBP (λ= 660 nm, 40 mW e 0,04 cm²) com as densidades de energia de 30, 60, 90, 120 e 150 J/cm². A viabilidade celular foi quantificada através do teste de exclusão com azul de tripan durante quatro dias. A influência do LBP nas fases do ciclo celular e a expressão do Antígeno Nuclear de Proliferação celular (PCNA) foram realizadas por citometria de fluxo. A expressão de β-Galactosidase foi considerada para quantificar a senescência celular. Considerando os parâmetros utilizados, observou-se aumento na viabilidade celular, da expressão de PCNA, maior população nas fases S e G2/m do ciclo celular, e a diminuição de células senescentes para as células não tumorais, enquanto que para as tumorais, nenhuma resposta foi observada na viabilidade celular, maior população nas fases S e G2/m do ciclo celular e na quantidade de células senescentes enquanto que a expressão de PCNA diminuiu. Diante disso, concluímos que o LBP exerceu efeitos em ambas as linhagens celulares. / Cancer is considered a public health problem worldwide. According to the Brazils National Cancer Institute (INCA), 576,000 new cases of cancer were estimated for 2015 in Brazil, representing the second leading cause of death. Radiotherapy may be a treatment to several of types of cancer, frequently using ionizing radiation to eradicate or prevent the proliferation of tumor cells. This treatment, however, can lead to death of non-tumor cells around in irradiated tissue. Given this, adjuvant therapies that can minimize the side effects of ionizing radiation are of extremely importance. In this context, low power laser (LPL) may be an alternative to modulate the response of healthy cells to ionizing radiation. In this study, cells of human gingival fibroblasts (FMM1) and breast cancer (MDAMB- 231) were exposed to gamma radiation at doses of 2.5 and 10 Gy. After twenty-four hours, cell were irradiated with LPL (λ= 660 nm, 40 mW and total area of 0.04 cm²) with energy densities of 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 J/cm². The cell viability was measured during four days, using the trypan blue technique. The influence of LPL on the cell cycle and on expression of the nuclear antigen of cellular proliferation (PCNA) was evaluated by flow cytometry. The expression of β-Galactosidase was the chosen method to assess cell senescence. Considering our adopted parameters, and focusing on the non-tumor cells, we have observed an increase in: 1) cell viability; 2) cell population in phases S and G2/M cell cycle; 3) PCNA expression with decrease in senescence. No alterations were observed in the cell viability, with greater population in phases S and G2/M cell cycle, while the number of senescent cells and the expression of PCNA were decreased. Therefore, we have concluded that the LPL promoted effects on both cell lineages, with increased cell viability on FMM1 cells, whether cancer cells maintained a decreased proliferation.

Introdução: A terapia com laser de baixa potência (LBP) vem sendo utilizada em Odontologia com diversos objetivos, em especial o de diminuir o tempo de cicatrização de feridas cirúrgicas. Objetivo: O objetivo do presente estudo in vivo foi avaliar qualitativamente e quantitativamente o efeito da irradiação com LBP no processo de remodelação óssea após a extração dentária em ratos jovens. Material e Método: Foram utilizados 60 ratos Wistar, distribuídos aleatoriamente nos seguintes grupos: Grupo Controle (n=30) animais com extração dentária sem aplicação do LBP, e Grupo Experimental (n=30) animais que tiveram extração dentária (Ext) e aplicação do LBP (Ext+LBP) nos três primeiros dias (54 J/cm2 por dia). Os animais foram sacrificados nos períodos de 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 e 10 dias após o procedimento de extração dentária. Neste estudo foram analisados os efeitos da aplicação do laser sobre o reparo alveolar através de microscopia de luz, luz polarizada e imunomarcação. Para isso foram avaliados os seguintes parâmetros: 1) porcentagem de formação óssea no interior do alvéolo; 2) grau de processo inflamatório; 3) grau de amadurecimento do colágeno; 4) imunomarcação para TRAP e RUNX-2. Todos os resultados obtidos foram submetidos à análise estatística através do teste ANOVA e teste de Mann-Whitney U (p<0.05). Resultados: Observou-se que os alvéolos do Grupo Experimental apresentaram processo de reparo mais evoluído quando comparados ao Grupo Controle, caracterizado pela organização mais rápida do coágulo sanguíneo, proliferação de fibroblastos nos restos do ligamento periodontal mais pronunciada, organização do colágeno e formação óssea mais precoce e mais intensa. Conclusão: A utilização do laser de baixa potência acelerou o processo de formação óssea durante as fases iniciais do experimento, embora nos períodos finais não houve diferença no processo de ossificação. / Introduction: Low Power Laser (LPL) therapy has been used in Dentistry to achieve many objectives, particularly to decrease the healing period on wound healing. Objectives: The purpose of this in vivo study was to evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively the irradiation effect with LPL in the bone remodeling process after tooth extraction in young rats. Material and Method: 60 Wistar rats were used, randomly distributed in the following groups: Control Group (n=30) animals with tooth extraction without LPL application, and Experimental Group (n=30) animals with tooth extraction (Ext) and LPL application (Ext+LPL) on the three fist days (54 J/cm2 per day). The animals were euthanized after the end periods of 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 10 days after the tooth extraction. This study looked into the effects of laser application on the alveolar repair through light microscopy, polarized light and immunostaining. After that, the following parameters were evaluated: 1) percentage of bone formation inside the dental alveolus; 2) degree of inflammatory process; 3) degree of collagen maturation; 4) immunostaining for TRAP and RUNX-2. All the results obtained were submitted to statistical analysis over the ANOVA and Mann- Whitney (p<0.05) test. Results: It was observed that the alveolus from the Experimental Group presented an improved repair process when compared to the Control Group, characterized by faster blood clot organization, more apparent fibroblasts proliferation on the remnants of the periodontal ligament, earlier and more intense collagen organization and bone generation. Conclusion: The use of Low Power Laser accelerated the bone generation process during the experimental initial period, although there was no difference in the ossification process in the final periods.

The "Internet of Things" (IoT) has been a topic of intensive research in industry, technological centers and academic community, being data communication one aspect of high relevance in this area. The exponential increase of devices with wireless capabilities as well as the number of users, alongside with the decreasing costs for implementation of broadband communications, created a suitable environment for IoT applications. An IoT device is typically composed by a wireless transceiver, a battery and/or energy harvesting unit, a power management unit, sensors and conditioning unit, a microprocessor and data storage unit. Energy supply is a limiting factor in many applications and the transceiver usually demands a significant amount of power. In this scenario the emerging wireless communication standard IEEE 802.11ah, in which this work focuses, was proposed as an option for low power sub-GHz radio communication. A typical architecture of modern radio receivers contains the analog radio-frequency (RF) front-end, which amplifies, demodulates and filters the input signal, and also analog-to-digital converters (ADC), that translate the analog signals to the digital domain. Additionally, the Successive-Approximation (SAR) ADC architecture has become popular recently due to its power efficiency, simplicity, and compatibility with scaled-down integrated CMOS technology. In this work, the RF receiver architecture and its specifications aiming low power consumption and IEEE 802.11ah standard complying are outlined, being the basis to the proposition of an 8-bit resolution and 10 MHz sampling rate ADC. A power efficient switching scheme for the charge redistribution SAR ADC architecture is explored in detail, along with the circuit-level design of the digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The transistor-level design of the two remaining ADC main blocks, sampling switch and comparator, are also explored. Electrical simulation of the physical layout, including parasitics, at a 130nm CMOS process resulted in a SINAD of 47:3 dB and 45:5 dB and at the receiver IF 3 MHz and at the Nyquist rate, respectively, consuming 21 W with a power supply of 1 V . The SAR ADC resulting Figure-of-Merit (FoM) corresponded to 11:1 fJ/conv-step at IF, and 13:7 fJ/conv-step at the Nyquist rate.

Ubiquitous computing describes the notion that computing devices will be everywhere: clothing, walls and floors of buildings, cars, forests, deserts, etc. Ubiquitous computing is becoming a reality: RFIDs are currently being introduced into the supply chain. Wireless distributed sensor networks (WSN) are already being used to monitor wildlife and to track military targets. Many more applications are being envisioned. For most of these applications some level of security is of utmost importance. Common to WSN and RFIDs are their severely limited power resources, which classify them as ultra-low power devices. Early sensor nodes used simple 8-bit microprocessors to implement basic communication, sensing and computing services. Security was an afterthought. The main power consumer is the RF-transceiver, or radio for short. In the past years specialized hardware for low-data rate and low-power radios has been developed. The new bottleneck are security services which employ computationally intensive cryptographic operations. Customized hardware implementations hold the promise of enabling security for severely power constrained devices. Most research groups are concerned with developing secure wireless communication protocols, others with designing efficient software implementations of cryptographic algorithms. There has not been a comprehensive study on hardware implementations of cryptographic algorithms tailored for ultra-low power applications. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a suite of cryptographic functions for authentication, encryption and integrity that is specifically fashioned to the needs of ultra-low power devices. This dissertation gives an introduction to the specific problems that security engineers face when they try to solve the seemingly contradictory challenge of providing lightweight cryptographic services that can perform on ultra-low power devices and shows an overview of our current work and its future direction.

Message Authentication Codes (MACs) are valuable tools for ensuring the integrity of messages. MACs may be built around a keyed hash function. Our main motivation was to prove that universal hash functions can be employed as underlying primitives of MACs in order to provide provable security in ultra-low-power applications such as the next generation self-powered sensor networks. The idea of using a universal hash function (NH) was explored in the construction of UMAC. This work presents three variations on NH, namely PH, PR and WH. The first hash function we propose, PH, produces a hash of length 2w and is shown to be 2^(-w)-almost universal. The other two hash functions, i.e. PR and WH, reach optimality and are proven to be universal hash functions with half the hash length of w. In addition, these schemes are simple enough to allow for efficient constructions. To the best of our knowledge the proposed hash functions are the first ones specifically designed for low-power hardware implementations. We achieve drastic power savings of up to 59% and speedup of up to 7.4 times over NH. Note that the speed improvement and the power reduction are accomplished simultaneously. Moreover, we show how the technique of multi- hashing and the Toeplitz approach can be combined to reduce the power and energy consumption even further while maintaining the same security level with a very slight increase in the amount of key material. At low frequencies the power and energy reductions are achieved simultaneously while keeping the hashing time constant. We develope formulae for estimation of leakage and dynamic power consumptions as well as energy consumption based on the frequency and the Toeplitz parameter t. We introduce a powerful method for scaling WH according to specific energy and power consumption requirements. This enables us to optimize the hash function implementation for use in ultra-low-power applications such as "Smart Dust" motes, RFIDs, and Piconet nodes. Our simulation results indicate that the implementation of WH-16 consumes only 2.95 ìW 500 kHz. It can therefore be integrated into a self- powered device. By virtue of their security and implementation features mentioned above, we believe that the proposed universal hash functions fill an important gap in cryptographic hardware applications.

This M.S. thesis introduces new modulus scaling techniques for transforming a class of primes into special forms which enable efficient arithmetic. The scaling technique may be used to improve multiplication and inversion in finite fields. We present an efficient inversion algorithm that utilizes the structure of a scaled modulus. Our inversion algorithm exhibits superior performance to the Euclidean algorithm and lends itself to efficient hardware implementation due to its simplicity. Using the scaled modulus technique and our specialized inversion algorithm we develop an elliptic curve processor architecture. The resulting architecture successfully utilizes redundant representation of elements in GF(p) and provides a low-power, high speed, and small footprint specialized elliptic curve implementation. We also introduce a unified Montgomery multiplier architecture working on the extension fields GF(p), GF(2) and GF(3). With the increasing research activity for identity based encryption schemes, there has been an increasing need for arithmetic operations in field GF(3). Since we based our research on low-power and small footprint applications, we designed a unified architecture rather than having a seperate hardware for GF{3}. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a unified architecture was built working on three different extension fields.