Hand-held devices are among the most successful consumer electronics in modern society. Behind these successful devices, lies a key analog design technique that involves high-performance analog-to-digital conversion combined with very low power consumption. This dissertation presents two different approaches to achieving high power efficiency from a two-step pipelined architecture, which is generally known as one of the most power-consuming analog-to-digital converters. In the first approach, an analog feedback loop of a residue amplifier in a two-step pipelined analog-to-digital converter is reconfigured digitally using a single comparator and an R-2R digital-to-analog converter. This comparator-based structure can reduce power consumption of a conventional two-step pipelined analog-to-digital converter which consists of an opamp-based residue amplifier followed by a second- stage analog-to-digital converter. In addition, this dissertation includes circuit design techniques that provide a digital offset correction for the comparator-based two-step structure, binary-weighted switching for an R-2R digital-to-analog converter, and reference trimming for a flash analog-to-digital converter. A 10-b prototype analog-to-digital converter achieves an FOM of 121 fJ/conversion-step under 0.7-V supply. The second approach provides a way to achieve low power consumption for a high-resolution two-step pipelined analog-to-digital converter. An opamp is designed to consume optimized static power using a quarter-scaled residue gain together with minimized loading capacitance from the proposed second stage. A 14-b prototype analog-to-digital converter achieves an FOM of 31.3 fJ/conversion-step with an ENOB of 11.4 b, which is the lowest FOM in high-resolution analog-to-digital converters having greater than an ENOB of 10 b. Finally, the potential for further power reduction in a two-step pipelined analog-to-digital converter is discussed as a topic for future research. / Graduation date: 2012

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1999 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Most traditional approaches to TT&C have employed waveforms that are neither very power nor bandwidth efficient. A new approach to TT&C waveforms greatly improves these efficiencies. Binary Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) provides a constant envelope bandwidth efficient signal for applications above about 10 Kbps. The constant envelope preserves the spectrum through saturated amplifiers. It provides the best power efficiency when used with turbo coding. For protection against various kinds of burst errors it includes the hybrid interleaving for memory and delay efficiency and packet compatible operations in Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) environments. Commanding, telemetry, mission data transmission, and tracking are multiplexed in TDMA format.

In this thesis we have explored the co-designed paradigm to show alternative processor design points. Specifically, we have provided HW/SW mechanisms for instruction fusion, issue and commit for modern processors. We have implemented a co-designed virtual machine monitor that binary translates x86 instructions into RISC like micro-ops. Moreover, the translations are stored as superblocks, which are a trace of basic blocks. These superblocks are further optimized using speculative and non-speculative optimizations. Hardware mechanisms exists in-order to take corrective action in case of misspeculations. During the course of this PhD we have made following contributions. Firstly, we have provided a novel Programmable Functional unit, in-order to speed up general-purpose applications. The PFU consists of a grid of functional units, similar to CCA, and a distributed internal register file. The inputs of the macro-op are brought from the Physical Register File to the internal register file using a set of moves and a set of loads. A macro-op fusion algorithm fuses micro-ops at runtime. The fusion algorithm is based on a scheduling step that indicates whether the current fused instruction is beneficial or not. The micro-ops corresponding to the macro-ops are stored as control signals in a configuration. The macro-op consists of a configuration ID which helps in locating the configurations. A small configuration cache is present inside the Programmable Functional unit, that holds these configurations. In case of a miss in the configuration cache configurations are loaded from I-Cache. Moreover, in-order to support bulk commit of atomic superblocks that are larger than the ROB we have proposed a speculative commit mechanism. For this we have proposed a Speculative commit register map table that holds the mappings of the speculatively committed instructions. When all the instructions of the superblock have committed the speculative state is copied to Backend Register Rename Table. Secondly, we proposed a co-designed in-order processor with with two kinds of accelerators. These FU based accelerators run a pair of fused instructions. We have considered two kinds of instruction fusion. First, we fused a pair of independent loads together into vector loads and execute them on vector load units. For the second kind of instruction fusion we have fused a pair of dependent simple ALU instructions and execute them in Interlock Collapsing ALUs (ICALU). Moreover, we have evaluated performance of various code optimizations such as list-scheduling, load-store telescoping and load hoisting among others. We have compared our co-designed processor with small instruction window out-of-order processors. Thirdly, we have proposed a co-designed out-of-order processor. Specifically we have reduced complexity in two areas. First of all, we have co-designed the commit mechanism, that enable bulk commit of atomic superblocks. In this solution we got rid of the conventional ROB, instead we introduce the Superblock Ordering Buffer (SOB). SOB ensures program order is maintained at the granularity of the superblock, by bulk committing the program state. The program state consists of the register state and the memory state. The register state is held in a per superblock register map table, whereas the memory state is held in gated store buffer and updated in bulk. Furthermore, we have tackled the complexity of Out-of-Order issue logic by using FIFOs. We have proposed an enhanced steering heuristic that fixes the inefficiencies of the existing dependence-based heuristic. Moreover, a mechanism to release the FIFO entries earlier is also proposed that further improves the performance of the steering heuristic. / En aquesta tesis hem explorat el paradigma de les màquines issue i commit per processadors actuals. Hem implementat una màquina virtual que tradueix binaris x86 a micro-ops de tipus RISC. Aquestes traduccions es guarden com a superblocks, que en realitat no és més que una traça de virtuals co-dissenyades. En particular, hem proposat mecanismes hw/sw per a la fusió d’instruccions, blocs bàsics. Aquests superblocks s’optimitzen utilitzant optimizacions especualtives i d’altres no speculatives. En cas de les optimizations especulatives es consideren mecanismes per a la gestió de errades en l’especulació. Al llarg d’aquesta tesis s’han fet les següents contribucions: Primer, hem proposat una nova unitat functional programmable (PFU) per tal de millorar l’execució d’aplicacions de proposit general. La PFU està formada per un conjunt d’unitats funcionals, similar al CCA, amb un banc de registres intern a la PFU distribuït a les unitats funcionals que la composen. Les entrades de la macro-operació que s’executa en la PFU es mouen del banc de registres físic convencional al intern fent servir un conjunt de moves i loads. Un algorisme de fusió combina més micro-operacions en temps d’execució. Aquest algorisme es basa en un pas de planificació que mesura el benefici de les decisions de fusió. Les micro operacions corresponents a la macro operació s’emmagatzemen com a senyals de control en una configuració. Les macro-operacions tenen associat un identificador de configuració que ajuda a localitzar d’aquestes. Una petita cache de configuracions està present dintre de la PFU per tal de guardar-les. En cas de que la configuració no estigui a la cache, les configuracions es carreguen de la cache d’instruccions. Per altre banda, per tal de donar support al commit atòmic dels superblocks que sobrepassen el tamany del ROB s’ha proposat un mecanisme de commit especulatiu. Per aquest mecanisme hem proposat una taula de mapeig especulativa dels registres, que es copia a la taula no especulativa quan totes les instruccions del superblock han comitejat. Segon, hem proposat un processador en order co-dissenyat que combina dos tipus d’acceleradors. Aquests acceleradors executen un parell d’instruccions fusionades. S’han considerat dos tipus de fusió d’instructions. Primer, combinem un parell de loads independents formant loads vectorials i els executem en una unitat vectorial. Segon, fusionem parells d’instruccions simples d’alu que són dependents i que s’executaran en una Interlock Collapsing ALU (ICALU). Per altra aquestes tecniques les hem evaluat conjuntament amb diverses optimizacions com list scheduling, load-store telescoping i hoisting de loads, entre d’altres. Aquesta proposta ha estat comparada amb un processador fora d’ordre. Tercer, hem proposat un processador fora d’ordre co-dissenyat efficient reduint-ne la complexitat en dos areas principals. En primer lloc, hem co-disenyat el mecanisme de commit per tal de permetre un eficient commit atòmic del superblocks. En aquesta solució hem substituït el ROB convencional, i en lloc hem introduït el Superblock Ordering Buffer (SOB). El SOB manté l’odre de programa a granularitat de superblock. L’estat del programa consisteix en registres i memòria. L’estat dels registres es manté en una taula per superblock, mentre que l’estat de memòria es guarda en un buffer i s’actulitza atòmicament. La segona gran area de reducció de complexitat considerarada és l’ús de FIFOs a la lògica d’issue. En aquest últim àmbit hem proposat una heurística de distribució que solventa les ineficiències de l’heurística basada en dependències anteriorment proposada. Finalment, i junt amb les FIFOs, s’ha proposat un mecanisme per alliberar les entrades de la FIFO anticipadament.

No / Sewer and gully flooding have become major causes of pollution particularly in the residential areas majorly caused by blockages in the water system and drainages. An effective way of avoiding this problem will be by deploying some mechanism to monitor gully pot water level at each point in time and escalating unusual liquid levels to the relevant authorities for prompt action to avoid a flooding occurrence. This paper presents a low cost power efficient gully pot liquid level monitoring technique. Passive RFID tags are deployed and signal variation from the Alien Reader Software are used to effectively estimate the level of liquid in the gully pot. The experimental set up is presented and an expository presentation is made of the passive tag design, modelled and simulated and adopted for same application.

No / Tank flooding have become major causes of pollution both in residential and industrial areas majorly caused by overflows of water(mostly residential) and volatile poisonous industrial liquids from the storage tanks. An effective way of avoiding this problem will be by deploying some mechanism to monitor liquid level at each point in time and escalating unusual liquid levelsto a pump control circuit or to the relevant authorities for prompt action to avoid a flooding occurrence. This paper presents a low cost power efficient liquid level monitoring technique. Passive RFID tags are designed modelled and deployed, the signal variation from the Alien Reader Software are used to effectively estimate the level of liquid in any surface or underground tank. The experimental set up is presented and an expository presentation is made of the passive tag design, modelled and simulated and adopted for same application.

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Mobile devices such as PDAs and cellular phones became indispensible part of business and entertainment world. There are a number of applications run on these devices and they tend to increase day by day causing devices tend to consume more battery power. H.264/AVC is an emerging video compression standard that is likely to be used widely in multimedia environments. As a mobile application, video compression algorithm of H.264 standard has a complex structure that increase the power demand of realizing hardware. In order to reduce this power demand, power consuming parts of the algorithm like deblocking filter and transform&amp / quantization need to be specifically changed for low power application. A low power deblocking filter and inverse transform/quantization algorithm for H.264/AVC decoder is to be proposed and implemented on FPGA.

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Testability is crucial in today’s complex industrial system on chips (SoCs), where sensitive on-chip analog voltages need to be measured. In such cases, an operational amplifier (opamp) is required to sufficiently buffer the signals before they can drive the chip pad and probe parasitics. A single-stage opamp offers an attractive choice since it is power efficient and eliminates the need for frequency compensation. However, it has to satisfy demanding specifications on its stability, input common mode range, output swing, settling time, closed-loop gain and offset voltage. In this work, the settling time performance of a conventional folded-cascode (FC) opamp is substantially improved. Settling time of an opamp consists of two major components, namely the slewing period and the linear settling period. In order to reduce the settling time significantly without incurring excessive area and power penalty, a prudent circuit implementation that minimizes both these constituents is essential. In this work, three different slew rate enhancement (SRE) circuits have been evaluated through extensive simulations. The SRE candidate providing robust slew rate improvement was combined with a current recycling folded cascode structure, resulting in lower slewing and linear settling time periods. Exhaustive simulations on a FC cascode amplifier with complementary inputs illustrate the effectiveness of these techniques in settling time reduction over all envisaged operating conditions.