In this presentation, we present the vision of “seamless wireless charging”. It is conceived that seamless charging, similar to what we have today with Wi-Fi for mobile internet, is possible. The technology is there to make it happen and we believe this will be a game changer for smart homes, offices and cities.

We make use of wireless power transfer (WPT) which provides inherent electrical isolation and completely eliminates the existing high-tension power transmission lines, cables, and towers. It reduces board charging cost, weight and volume.  Nevertheless, WPT, for say IoT devices or EVs, poses additional challenges and sustainability trade-offs.

To meet the challenges, we present a system , method , and device that provides power to an electrical unit such as an Internet of Things ( IoT ) device or an electric vehicle (EV) that includes a transmitter that provides power through electromagnetic waves , a receiver , an array that includes a plurality of metamaterial elements , such that the electrical power passes wirelessly from the transmitter to the array , and a smart controller that applies selective phase shifts to each of the metamaterial elements such that the power is transmitted from the transmitter , reflected off the array, and is received in phase at the receiver which converts the electromagnetic waves to an electric current to power the device. If the device moves, it sends a pilot signal to the transmitter which alerts the smart controller to adjust the reflected waves in real-time such that they are always received in phase. The harvested RF power is then converted to DC to charge the device using an appropriate rectenna circuit. We will present the details of the proposed system. Will also review some of the existing and emerging technologies for the wireless charging of IoT devices or EVs when stationary or on the move.

System- and circuit-level hardening techniques have been studied and deployed for decades in order to ensure correct operation in spite of perturbations induced by harsh environments. Traditional dependability attributes targeted by these techniques are reliability, functional safety, or availability. At the beginning of the century, new threats gained a significant attention with the increasing need for information technology (IT) security. So-called fault-based attacks were demonstrated and many works started, aiming at leveraging traditional hardening techniques in this new context. Since twenty years, both hardware attacks and circuit-level protections progressed at high speed but few works addressed the impact of hardening against faults on the level of security achieved with respect to the whole panel of possible malicious hardware attacks. With more and more systems designed to be robust against perturbations but having strong security requirements, and more and more systems having to cope with an increasingly large panel of malicious attacks, it is no more adequate to decorrelate perturbation-oriented hardening decisions from global security concerns.

This talk will overview the current state-of-the art, including the efforts to be made when implementing test-related functions (necessary in design-for-test methodologies) that are fundamental for efficient sifting and system-level fault avoidance but create large breaks in the system security. More globally, up-to-date limitations of hardening practice will be discussed and illustrated on practical examples. These examples will demonstrate the need to revisit current practices when security is a concern. Subjects for further work towards trustworthy digital integrated systems will thus be outlined.

The main objective is to raise the attendees awareness of currently increasing challenges when designing embedded systems with both safety/reliability/availability and security requirements. The talk will illustrate the increasing need of considering globally the robustness and hardware security goals in order to efficiently achieve trustworthy systems. In particular, it will be shown that hardening against natural disturbances can be also useful to counter malicious attacks based on perturbations but is far to be sufficient to achieve security and can even be counterproductive with respect to some other security threats. When hardware security is a concern, usual hardening and test approaches have to be revisited, adapted and completed with a different mindset and different trade-offs to reach.

Networked wireless microsystems can not only monitor and manage biological markers, environmental health, and industrial indicators but also add cost-, energy-, and life-saving intelligence to living organisms, homes, hospitals, office buildings, and public spaces. Ultra-small systems, however, cannot store sufficient energy to sustain monitoring, interface, processing, and telemetry functions for long. And replacing or recharging batteries in difficult-to-reach devices spread over a wide network can be labor-intensive, expensive, and in some cases, impossible. This is why alternate sources are the subject of ardent research today. Except power densities are low, and in many cases, intermittent, so supplying intelligent microsystems is challenging. Plus, tiny lithium-ion batteries and super capacitors, while power dense, cannot sustain life for extended periods. This talk shows how emerging microelectronic energy sources and power supplies can draw energy from elusive ambient and biological sources to power intelligent biomedical microsystems.

By the end of years 70s, microprocessors were designed by hand showing excellent layout compaction. It will be shown some highlights of the reverse engineering of the Z8000, which control part was designed by hand, showing several layout optimization strategies. The observation of the Z8000 layout inspired the research of methods to do the automatic generation of the layout of any transistor network, allowing to reduce the number of transistors to implement a circuit, and by consequence, the leakage power. Some of the layout automation tools developed by our group are briefly presented.
A way to reduce power consumption is to reduce the number of transistors used to implement a circuit, as leakage power is proportional to the number of transistors. It is shown a physical design approach to reduce the number of transistors needed to perform a task.  It is proposed an EDA tool set to automatically generate the physical design of any transistor network. It shows an important reduction on power, improving also reliability. A standard cell library has a limited number of logical functions, and a limited number of sizings. The talk is target in optimization methods to reduce the number of transistors of a circuit. The methods allow the realization of any possible logical function or transistor network. It is included comparisons with solutions using the traditional standard cell methodology.

The integration of sensing technologies with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming industries ranging from robotics to healthcare. This tutorial provides an overview of the key sensing devices, circuits, and systems that are driving this evolution. Targeted at students and researchers, the session will cover foundational principles and the latest advancements for applications such as robotic tactile sensors, neural recording devices, and IoT sensing tags.

Firstly, the tutorial will introduce multiplexing techniques, which allow for the efficient use of resources by combining multiple signals in a single transmission. Secondly, event-driven sensing will be covered, highlighting how systems can become more responsive by focusing on significant events rather than continuous data collection. Thirdly, low-power sensing techniques will be introduced, emphasizing their role in enabling battery-less IoT sensing systems that can operate autonomously in a wide range of applications.

By the end of the session, attendees will understand how these techniques can be applied to enhance sensing technologies in robotics, healthcare, and IoT devices. The tutorial will equip researchers and students with the knowledge to develop next-generation, highly integrated, and lowpower sensing systems in the AIOT era.

The open-source ecosystem that has flourished in recent years provides integrated circuit (IC) designers unlimited possibilities for innovation. Open-source computer-aided design (CAD) tools and process design kits (PDKs) empower engineers to design and simulate ICs without the constraints of proprietary software, fostering collaboration across the field, especially in academia, for research and education. Integrated circuits design requires MOSFET models that balance complexity with accuracy. IC designers often rely on oversimplified MOSFET models of traditional textbooks that are only valid in specific regions of operation. In contrast, for IC simulation, accurate BSIM models provided by most PDKs are highly complex, with hundreds of parameters. Bridging the gap between the oversimplified inaccurate models and the extremely complex ones used in simulation is crucial for efficient IC design, particularly in the pre-simulation phase.

This tutorial will present ACM2, a minimalist model compatible with open-source simulators such as Ngspice. ACM2 is a comprehensive model that provides single-piece expressions for all DC characteristics and small-signal equations across all regions (from weak to strong inversion, and from triode to saturation), ensuring a broad coverage in the IC design space. The DC model of ACM2 is composed of only 3 long-channel parameters and 2 short-channel parameters.

Tutorial attendants will learn about the ACM2 DC and small-signal characteristics, how to extract the model’s 5 DC parameters using the IHP 130 nm open PDK, and how to use the model to simulate integrated circuits in an open-source CAD environment. Finally, an RF low-noise amplifier will be presented using ACM2-based design methodologies.

In this tutorial, the fundamental and application examples of the supply-sensing circuits and systems. Firstly, I will summary the motivation for the development of the supplysensing circuits and systems and its historical overviews. Secondary, I will introduce the its application example of the supply-sensing circuits and systems, specifically bio-fuel-celloperated biosensing systems, which were presented in BioCAS 2015/2016/2018/2023, TBioCAS, TCAS-II from our group. The supply-sensing architecture uses bio-fuel cells as both power source and sensing converter. In addition, I will plan to present the latest result on the work on supply-to-digital converter using supply-dependent-activation building blocks which was presented in Symp. on VLSI 2024. The tutorial will conclude with a discussion of recent work and future applications on the supply-driven systems.