In the last few years, bio-inspired solutions have attracted the attention of the scientific community. Several world-renowned institutions have sponsored and created laboratories in order to understand the forms, functions and behavior of living organisms. Some methods can be highlighted in the search for geometric representation of the shapes found in the nature, the fractal geometry, the polar geometry, and the superformula of Gielis. This chapter is focusing on bio-inspired microstrip antennas, especially on leafshaped antennas from the Gielis superformula that open a vast research field for more compact antennas with low visual impact.

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This article focusses on Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPAD) integrated in CMOS UTBB FDSOI (Ultra-ThinBody and Box Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator technology), as an original approach for natively 3D SPAD pixels. In parallel to the optimization of the SPAD performances, we discuss in this paper some design issues relative to body-biasing effects. The associated electronics placed on top of the SPAD is constrained: the well layer below the box must be a P-type then only regular threshold voltage NMOS and low threshold voltage PMOS transistors can be used. The SPAD avalanche events will affect the electronics through body-biasing effects that can be advantageously exploited for an indirect sensing of the SPAD activity. Then two simple indirect sensing cells are studied. Firstly, a voltage divider realized with two transistors in series (PFET and NFET operating as active resistances) is simulated and measured to demonstrate its ability to detect avalanches. Secondly, an even simpler cell is studied, as it consists of only one NMOS transistor configured as an equivalent capacitive bridge (gate and box capacitances). Finally, the advantages and disadvantages from a design point of view are addressed.