This paper describes an electrocardiograph (ECG) monitoring SoC using a non-volatile MCU (NVMCU) and a noise-tolerant instantaneous heartbeat detector. The novelty of this work is the combination of the non-volatile MCU for normally off computing and a noise-tolerant-QRS (heartbeat) detector to achieve both low-power and noise tolerance. To minimize the stand-by current of MCU, a non-volatile flip-flop and a 6T-4C NVRAM are used. Proposed plate-line charge-share and bit-line non-precharge techniques also contribute to mitigate the active power overhead of 6T-4C NVRAM. The proposed accurate heartbeat detector uses coarse-fine autocorrelation and a template matching technique. Accurate heartbeat detection also contributes system-level power reduction because the active ratio of ADC and digital block can be reduced using heartbeat prediction. Measurement results show that the fully integrated ECG-SoC consumes 6.14 μ A including 1.28- μA non-volatile MCU and 0.7- μA heartbeat detector.

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A ferroelectric-based (FE-based) non-volatile flipflop (NVFF) is proposed for low-power LSI. Since leakage current in a logic circuit can be cut off by non-volatile storage capability of NVFFs, the standby power is reduced to zero. The use of complementarily stored data in coupled FE capacitors makes it possible to achieve 88% reduction of FE capacitor size while maintaining a wide read voltage margin of 240mV (minimum) at 1.5V, which results in 2.4pJ low access energy with 10-year, 85°C data retention capability. An access speed of FE capacitors can be adaptively changed according to required retention time, which becomes 1.6fLs for 10-year data retention, and 170ns for 10-hour data retention. Especially, short-term data retention is suitable for power gating implementation. Applying the proposed circuitry in 32bit CPU of a vital sensor LSI, its power consumption becomes 13% of that of conventional one with area overhead of 64% using 130nm CMOS with Pb(Zr,Ti)03(PZT) thin films.

This paper describes an electrocardiograph (ECG) monitoring SoC using a non-volatile MCU (NVMCU) and a noise tolerant instantaneous heart rate (IHR) monitor. The novelty of this work is the combination of the non-volatile MCU for normally-off computing and a noise-tolerant-QRS (heart beat) detection algorithm to achieve both low-power and noise tolerance. To minimize the stand-by current of MCU, a nonvolatile flip-flop and a 6T-4C NVRAM are employed. Proposed plate-line charge-share and bit-line non-precharge techniques also contribute to mitigate the active power overhead of 6T-4C NVRAM. The proposed accurate heart beat detector employs a coarse-fine autocorrelation and a template matching technique. Accurate heart beat detection also contributes system level power reduction because the active ratio of ADC and digital block can be reduced using a heart beat prediction. Then, at least 25% active time can be reduced. Measurement results show the fully integrated ECG-SoC consumes 6.14A including 1.28-A nonvolatile MCU and 0.7-A heart rate extractor. 

Novel solid-state spatial light modulator (SLM) is developed by using an electro-optic thin film technology. The use of solgel technique makes it possible to fabricate optically smooth 800nm-thick lead zirconate titanate (PZT) films. It shows large electro-optic effects ∆n=0.02 with the fastest switching response of 12ns that have ever been reported. The prototype 180x180 SLM array on 5mm x 5mm-size chip demonstrates 2-dimmensional displays with the three primary colors.