Designing ultra-low power systems with non-uniform sampling and event-driven logic

Circuit power consumption is closely related to data processing. This observation is the foundation of a new low-power approach based on a non-uniform sampling scheme combined with asynchronous event-driven logic. This will be useful for handheld computing systems and mobile applications such as wireless solutions for telemetry and metering, or medical implants. These last applications required a very low level of consumption because they remain active during several years. Here, an alternative to the classical design techniques for ultra-low power consumption is presented. Our case study is applied to physiological signals used in a medical implant and shows a drastic reduction of the power consumption compared to the classical approach.