Research Activities ‒ MSIC-LAB ‐ EPFL

Charge-Domain Analog/Mixed-Signal Circuits

Analog/mixed-signal circuits traditionally have relied on continuous-time, static-power elements. However, there is a rising opportunity for circuits that focus on “charge” as the main mode of implementing electrical functions. These circuits are efficient as they inherently focus on energy, and provide useful characteristics (such as noise-efficiency, dynamicity, reusability, scalability) that previous generation analog/mixed-signal circuits could not. MSIC Lab is pioneering this new-found design approach to demonstrate highly resource-efficient circuits for applications in energy management, sensor front-end, and communication circuits.

Compact Analogs for Emerging Applications

The next wave of circuit applications is enabled by an array of high-performance analogs (and ADCs). These emerging applications include 5G/6G MIMO transceivers, in-memory compute arrays, >100Gbps serial links, neural probe interfaces, 3D imagers, and many more things to come. Yet, conventional analog circuits greatly discount the effect of size, hence it adversely affects the system cost and robustness when used in an array. The MSIC Lab is actively investigating more compact and energy-efficient circuits resorting to novel design approaches (e.g. charge-injection technique for ADCs) that focus on improving performance per area. With these techniques, we intend to further scale down analog circuits by design.

Low-Power and Small Sensors/Actuators Interface for IoT

As battery life and production cost are directly linked to the commercial success of IoT and wearables, enabling a family of low-energy sensors/actuators is becoming highly important. Wearables based on low-power sensors/actuators (in milli-to-micro Watts) have successfully debuted as a commercial product. Yet, the requirement for the battery has it conform to a rather strange form factor. At MSIC Lab, we believe that enabling a lower power family of sensors/actuators (in nano-Watts), and making them much smaller would enable the artistic design of these everyday things while providing the convenience of modern electronics.