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.”

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