Project: TWES

Name: TWES

TItle: Time in Wireless Embedded Systems

Description: Wireless embedded networks have matured beyond academic research as industry now considers the advantages of using wireless sensors. With this growth, reliability and real-time demands increase, thus timing becomes more and more relevant.
This project explores the further development of highly stable, low-power clocks for wireless embedded systems. Wireless embedded networks, due to their wire-free nature, present one of the most extreme power budget design challenges in the field of electronics. Improvements in timing can reduce the energy required to operate an embedded network. However, the more accurate a time source is, the more power it consumes. To comprehensively address the time and power problems in wireless embedded systems, we studied the exploitation of dual-crystal clock architectures to combat effects of temperature induced frequency error and high power consumption of high-frequency clocks. Combining these architectures with the inherent communication capabilities of wireless embedded systems, this project proposes two new technologies;
(1) a new time synchronization service that automatically calibrates a local clock to changes in temperature;
(2) a high-low frequency timer that allows a duty-cycled embedded system to achieve ultra low-power sleep, while keeping fine granularity time resolution offered only by high power, high frequency clocks.

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Status: Inactive Project

Main Research Area: Power-aware Computing and Communications

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