AC Computing Methodology for RF Powered IoT Devices

An AC computing methodology is proposed for integration in wirelessly powered devices such as RF tags and sensor nodes. Contrary to traditional platforms that integrate DC-powered computational logic along with the rectification and regulation stages, in the proposed approach, the harvested RF signal is directly used to power the data processing circuitry by leveraging charge-recycling and adiabatic circuit theory. A near-field based wireless power harvesting system with a lightweight encryption core SIMON is developed to evaluate the proposed framework. Simulation results in 65 nm technology demonstrate that the overall power consumption can be reduced by up to 34 times as compared to the conventional approach that relies on AC-to-DC conversion and static CMOS logic. This reduction in power enables significant computation capability for RF-powered devices.