Green SoCs for a sustainable Internet-of-Things

TLDR

The Internet‑of‑Things envisions trillions of wireless sensor nodes, requiring a sustainable deployment that must be addressed with a Design‑for‑the‑Environment approach. The study aims to minimize the embodied energy and carbon footprint of WSN production, the ecotoxicity of WSN e‑waste, and the Internet traffic generated by the data. We investigate how ultra‑low‑power, high‑performance systems‑on‑a‑chip in nanometer CMOS can enable compact batteryless WSNs with on‑node data processing to meet these goals. We review recent results from Université catholique de Louvain on green SoC design for a massive yet sustainable IoT deployment.

Abstract

The vision of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) calls for the deployment of trillions of wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) in our environment. A sustainable deployment of such a large number of electronic systems needs to be addressed with a Design-for-the-Environment approach. This requires minimizing 1) the embodied energy and carbon footprint of the WSN production, 2) the ecotoxicity of the WSN e-waste, and 3) the Internet traffic associated to the generated data. In this paper, we study how ultra-low-power yet high-performance systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) in nanometer CMOS technologies can contribute to these objectives by allowing compact batteryless WSNs with on-node data processing. We then review latest results achieved at the Université catholique de Louvain in the field of green SoC design for a massive yet sustainable deployment of the IoT.