High-efficiency power delivery, as well as low-power circuit design continues to be an important concern in energy harvesting circuits and application that are limited by the battery capacity. This thesis presents a high-efficiency switched-capacitance charge pump in 20 nm III-V heterojunction tunnel field-effect transistor (HTFET) technology for low-input-voltage applications. It provides for higher efficiency than the conventional CMOS solution. The proposed circuit doubles the ratio of input voltage to output voltage, which is strongly related to its high efficiency. The state of art CMOS-based conventional switched-capacitance charge pump achieve power efficiency as 82% and output as 1.8V with 1.0V input voltage with 130nm technology. The steep-slope and low-threshold HTFET device characteristics are utilized to extend the input voltage range to below 0.20 V. Meanwhile, the uni-directional current conduction is utilized to reduce the reverse energy loss and to simplify the non-overlapping phase controlling. Furthermore, with uni-directional current conduction, an improved cross-coupled charge pump topology is proposed for higher voltage output and power-conversion-efficiency (PCE). Simulation results show that the proposed HTFET charge pump achieves 90.4% and 91.4% power conversion efficiency with a 1.0 k[omega] resistive load. The DC results obtained are 0.37 V and 0.57 V, when the input voltage is 0.20 V and 0.30 V, respectively.

The increasing demand in electronic portability imposes low power consumption as a key metric to analog and digital circuit design. Tunnel FET (TFET) devices have been explored mostly in digital circuits, showing promising results for ultra-low power and energy efficient circuit applications. The TFETpresents a low inverse sub-threshold slope (SS) that allows a low leakage energy consumption, desirable in many digital circuits, especially memories. In Ultra-Low Input Power Conversion Circuits based on Tunnel-FETs, the TFET is explored as an alternative technology also for ultra-low power and voltage conversion and management circuits, suitable for weak energy harvesting (EH) sources. The TFET distinct electrical characteristics under reverse bias conditions require changes in conventional circuit topologies. In this book, ultra-low input power conversion circuits based on TFETs are designed and analyzed, evaluating their performance as rectifiers, charge pumps and power management circuits (PMC) for RF and DC EH sources.

This book contains extended and revised versions of the best papers presented at the 24th IFIP WG 10.5/IEEE International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration, VLSI-SoC 2016, held in Tallinn, Estonia, in September 2016. The 11 papers included in the book were carefully reviewed and selected from the 36 full papers presented at the conference. The papers cover a wide range of topics in VLSI technology and advanced research. They address the latest scientific and industrial results and developments as well as future trends in the field of System-on-Chip (SoC) Design.

This book enables readers to gain a deep understanding of the challenges related to the design of a charge pump (CP). Analysis, modeling, design strategies and topologies are treated in detail. Novel and high-performance CP topologies and related design are organized in a coherent manner, with particular care devoted to ultra-low power and energy harvesting applications. The authors provide basic theoretical foundations as needed, in order to set the stage for readers’ comprehension of analyses and results. Exhaustive methodologies are presented and analytical derivations are included, enabling readers to gain insight on the main dependencies among the relevant circuit parameters. Although the material is presented in a formal and theoretical manner, emphasis is on the design perspective, using many practical examples and measured results.

This book describes technology used for effective sensing of our physical world and intelligent processing techniques for sensed information, which are essential to the success of Internet of Things (IoT). The authors provide a multidisciplinary view of sensor technology from materials, process, circuits, to big data domains and they showcase smart sensor systems in real applications including smart home, transportation, medical, environmental, agricultural, etc. Unlike earlier books on sensors, this book provides a “global” view on smart sensors covering abstraction levels from device, circuit, systems, and algorithms.

This book provides readers specializing in ultra-low power supply design for self-powered applications an invaluable reference on reconfigurable switched capacitor power converters. Readers will benefit from a comprehensive introduction to the design of robust power supplies for energy harvesting and self-power applications, focusing on the use of reconfigurable switched capacitor based DC-DC converters, which is ideal for such applications. Coverage includes all aspects of switched capacitor power supply designs, from fundamentals, to reconfigurable power stages, and sophisticated controller designs.