A novel floating gate circuit family with subthreshold voltage swing for ultra-low power operation

The behavior of emerging wireless sensor networks is often characterized by short bursts of computation and communication followed by long periods of inactivity. As the unit devices are typically powered by batteries, conservation of energy - particularly during idle time - is paramount. Subthreshold logic has been proposed for providing lower energy per operation than traditional CMOS, but does so with a significant degradation of performance. This paper describes a novel approach of dynamically switching between sub- and super-threshold operation through the use of floating gate techniques in order to provide high performance during active periods and low leakage during idle periods.