Ambient intelligence is the next wave of information technology, driven by software and both enabled and constrained by nanoscale physics, according to a researcher speaking at the International Solid State Circuits Conference here.
Hugo De Man, senior research fellow at the Interuniversity Microelectronics Center (IMEC, Leuven, Belgium), said the emergence of ambient intelligence will not require devices based solely on CMOS technologies. Instead, technologies emerging around CMOS, such as 3D packaging, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and polymer displays will also play key roles. Nanoscale biosensors could also connect electronics to biotechnology via IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol that enables every object on earth to have its own unique IP address.
In his ISSCC keynote address, De Man said Moore's Law scaling can only go so far. He called for a "more-than-Moore" strategy, the cost-effective integration of CMOS with MEMS, optical and passive components, new materials, biosilicon interfaces, autonomous energy sources and grain-size 3D packaging.
Complexity rests not in the number of transistors but in combining technologies with networking architectures to obtain simple sensor nodes. These microwatt devices are low-duty-cycle, low-throughput microsystems that unify a design into a single package: sensor, signal conditioning, A/D conversion, signal processing, a power-aware MAC layer, antennas, energy management and energy scavenging.
IMEC has developed a 1.4-cm3 2.4GHz sensor based on laminate packaging of bare dies, a solar-cell battery charger and an integrated antenna, De Man said. The system consumes 500 microwatts at 400 bits/s and has a 1 percent duty cycle. For true energy scavenging, only solar cells, piezoelectric MEMS and thermal generators have proven successful, but their average power capacity is limited to 100 microWatts/cm3.
