Next-Gen End-Point Radios down to sub-µW – Enabling Ubiquitous and Friction-Less Immersion in Existing Wireless Environments

In this talk, recent (and on-going) advances in backscattered transmitters and wake-up receivers with consumption down to the sub-µW peak power range are presented. The underlying concepts are supported by extensive silicon demonstrations in bulk and FD-SOI technologies. Among newly available opportunities, scalable energy-datarate down to sub-pJ/bit and up to 4K video streaming are shown for the first time in the same transmitter architecture. Protocol flexibility via the first software-defined backscattered transmitter is illustrated to extend the device lifespan via adaptation to ever-evolving standards and across geographies for aggressive chip reuse. Standard compliance with IEEE 802.ba, 802.11b, BLE5, Zigbee and Z-Wave is experimentally validated with existing commodity transceivers, demonstrating frictionless immersion in existing wireless environments. Aggressive reuse of RF waves for simultaneous communications, harvesting and sensing is finally shown as a purely-harvested full system demonstration with sub-µW peak power.