Technology trends, requirements and challenges for ubiquitous self-powered IOT systems deployment

Abstract

Always ON always sensing small form factor edge systems for internet of things (IOT) are becoming ubiquitous. Many applications require these tiny devices to be self-powered and maintenance-free. Hence, they should be able to harvest energy from available ambient sources and should have low manufacturing cost. Millimeter-scale form factor systems have been developed in academia for the past few years. Small form factor edge systems are becoming commercially available. These systems are essential in today’s cyber physical world. We will introduce the available market and the trends driving this growth in IOT system deployments. That will be followed by typical system requirements for a typical self-powered IOT system. Challenges to realize such a dream IOT system will be discussed. We will present two approaches to system design, namely bottom-up and top-down. An X86-based tiny microcontroller unit (MCU) was designed to enable multiple IOT usages. This MCU followed a bottom-up approach – ultra-low power low cost MCU was designed first and then applied to IOT systems such as smart sensor tag for package tracking. The discussion will introduce another IOT system that followed a top-down usage-driven approach. In this case, an agricultural usage was chosen that required energy harvesting, X86-class edge computing, visual recognition on the edge, secure storage, secure wireless communication and ultra-low power maintenance free operation. An IOT system was architected for this usage and later demonstrated. We will conclude the presentation with comparison of these two distinct approaches to IOT system design.