Power efficient electronic innovations recognised at prestigious ISSCC 2017 conference

Innovative electronics research from the University of Southampton has been presented to world experts at a leading international conference.

Researchers from Southampton’s department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have presented two papers at the prestigious International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, the world’s foremost forum for advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) event, which ran from 5-9 February, brought together expert engineers from across the globe to study the theme of ‘Intelligent Chips for a Smart World’.

Research carried out through Southampton’s ARM-ECS Research Centre featured in an early session on Analog Techniques. The paper, entitled A 0.68nW/kHz Supply Independent Relaxation Oscillator with ±0.49%/V and 96ppm/°C Stability, demonstrated an oscillator design which compares favourably to state-of-the-art for watts-per-kHz, while still exhibiting comparable temperature and voltage stability characteristics.

The design had been validated as part of the Pipistrelle test-chip family. The paper was presented by Anand Savanth, who is a PhD student at ECS and a Staff Engineer at ARM Cambridge, and was co-authored by ECS academic Dr Alex Weddell and ARM Principal Research Engineer James Myers. The ARM-ECS Research Centre is an industrial research collaboration co-directed by Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi and Visiting Professor Dr David Flynn.

The ISSCC’s Harvesting and Wireless Power session included a paper describing a ‘Self-Tuning Resonant Inductive Link Transmit Driver Using Quadrature-Symmetric Phase-Switched Fractional Capacitance’, authored by Professor William Redman-White in ECS alongside Senior Industrial Teaching Fellow Rares Bodnar and postgraduate research students Teerasak Lee and Henry Kennedy.

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering, said: “I am proud to see the world-leading research in Electronics and Computer Science at the forefront of global discussion to shape our future connected world. It is testament to the cutting-edge work led by our academics, and through our partnership with ARM, that two papers have been accepted into one of the most respected international conferences for electronics design.â€?

More information on Southampton’s Electronics and Electrical Engineering research is available through the ECS website.