The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has presented a $1.8 million grant to a project headed by David Horsley, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. The project, "Ultralow Power Microsystems Via an Integrated Piezoelectric MEMS-CMOS Platform," includes the participation of co-PIs Xiaoguang "Leo" Liu and Rajeevan Amirtharajah, both professors in the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Horsley's group has teamed up with InvenSense, the company that makes the motion sensors -- gyro and accelerometer -- in smart phones. The UC Davis team and InvenSense are working to develop revolutionary, ultra-low-power sensors that will allow always-on sensing. The program goal is to develop an acoustic sensor and an acceleration sensor that run on near-zero power, producing a wake-up signal when a particular signature is detected: say, a car or truck driving by, or a generator being switched on.
By way of comparison, the existing sensors in smart phones, although already operating on low power, nonetheless require about 10 milliwatts: roughly 1 million times more power than the sensors being developed by Horsley's team.
Current state-of-the-art sensors use active electronics to monitor the environment for the external trigger, consuming power continuously and limiting the sensor lifetime to months or less. The N-ZERO program intends to extend the lifetime of remotely deployed communications and environmental sensors from months to years, by supporting projects that demonstrate the ability to continuously and passively monitor the environment, waking an electronic circuit only upon the detection of a specific trigger signature.
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