Extrema-Triggered Conversion for Non-Stationary Signal Acquisition in Wireless Sensor Nodes

Abstract

While wireless sensor node (WSNs) have proliferated with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), uniformly sampled analog–digital converters (ADCs) have traditionally reigned paramount in the signal processing pipeline. The large volume of data generated by uniformly sampled ADCs while capturing most real-world signals, which are highly non-stationary and sparse in information content, considerably strains the power budget of WSNs during data transmission. Given the pressing need for intelligent sampling, this work proposes an extrema pulse generator devised to trigger ADCs at significant signal extrema, thereby curbing the volume of data points collected and transmitted, and mitigating transmission power draw. After providing a comprehensive signal-theoretic rationale, we construct and experimentally validate these circuits on a system-on-chip field-programmable analog array in a 350 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) process. Operating within a power range of 4.3–12.3 µW (contingent on the input bandwidth requirements), the extrema pulse generator has proven to be capable of effectively sampling both synthetic and natural signals, achieving significant reductions in data volume and signal reconstruction error. Using a nonideality-resilient reconstruction algorithm, that we develop in this work, experimental comparisons between extrema and uniform sampling show that extrema sampling achieves an 18-fold lower normalized root mean square reconstruction error for a quadratic chirp signal, despite requiring 5-fold fewer sample points. Similar improvements in both the reconstruction error and effective sampling rate objectives are found experimentally for an electrocardiogram signal. Using both theoretical and experimental methods, this work demonstrates the potential of extrema-triggered systems for extending Pareto frontiers in modern, resource-constrained sensing scenarios.

Keywords

• analog–digital conversion
• asynchronous
• event detection
• extrema
• field-programmable analog array
• non-stationary signal