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Research Team

Dr Alex Weddell

Centre Technical Manager and Lecturer

Alex was awarded a first-class MEng Electronic Engineering degree from the University of Southampton in 2005, then studied for his PhD on energy-aware wireless sensor nodes (awarded in 2010). He has contributed to the Defence Technology Centre “Adaptive energy aware sensor networks” project, and EPSRC projects “New directions for intelligent sensors” and “Next Generation Energy-Harvesting Electronics: Holistic Approach”. He has experience with a range of energy harvesting devices and developed a platform which supports a mix of energy sources to power an energy-aware wireless sensor node. He is now a Lecturer, with research interests in energy harvesting, wireless sensor networks, and application-driven system design. He is a co-investigator on the H2020 Clean Sky 2 “Integrated Intelligent Bearing Systems (I2BS)” project, and EPSRC Platform “Wearable and Autonomous Computing for Future Smart Cities”.

Related Publications

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Related News

Full system simulation tool released for intermittent computing systems

27th March 2020

We have recently released Fused, a tool developed by Arm-ECS PhD researcher Sivert Sliper for full system simulation of energy-driven and intermittent computing systems. Fused is a full-system simulator for modelling energy-driven computers. To accurately model the interplay between energy-availability, power consumption, and execution; Fused models energy and execution in…

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Intermittent computing research featured in Nature Physics

6th March 2020

Arm-ECS research into energy-driven and intermittently powered computing systems has been featured in a Nature Physics article by Mark Buchanan discussing on biologically inspired computing. In particular, it focuses on our recent article on Energy Driven Computing in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, led by Arm-ECS researcher Sivert…

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Anand successfully defends PhD thesis

23rd January 2020

Congratulations to Anand Savanth, who has successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Techniques And Circuits For Ultra-Efficient Energy Harvesting Sensor Nodes”. Anand’s research focussed on enabling efficient energy harvesting to enable the vision of a trillion sensor node Internet-of-Things (IoT). During his studies, his designs were taped-out through the Pipistrelle…

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Paper Accepted in IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits

13th October 2018

A paper describing a novel ultra-low power single-phase clocked flip-flop has been accepted by the prestigious IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits. The paper describes a new 18-transistor single-phase clocked flip-flop (18TSPC). The novel topology is fully-static and contention-free, and has the lowest number of transistors reported for its type.…

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Arm-ECS Research in Energy Harvesting Presented at EnerHarv 2018

29th May 2018

Dr Alex Weddell, from the Arm-ECS Research Centre, presented a talk on “Energy Harvesting in Future Integrated IoT Devices” at the EnerHarv 2018 workshop, hosted at the Tyndall National Institute, Cork, Ireland. The inaugural event, organised by the Power Sources Manufacturers Association, featured presentations from world-leaders in energy harvesting and…

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Flip-flop Patent Granted

29th May 2018

A patent for a new single-phase clocked flip-flop, constructed from as few as 18 transistors, has been granted. The device was initially created by PhD student Yunpeng Cai during his studies at ECS and developed into a robust design while on his internship at Arm Research, Cambridge. Initial silicon results…

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Paper Accepted in IEEE TCAS Special Issue on IoT

31st July 2017

Research work from the “Energy Harvesting and Integrated Power Conversion for Micro-Scale Sensor Nodes” project was recently accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I, in a special issue on the Internet of Things (IoT) “From Sensing to Sensemaking”. The highly impactful special issue has topics spanning…

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Team Awarded ÂŁ1.4M EPSRC Platform Grant

1st June 2017

A team of researchers from the ARM-ECS Research Centre have been awarded ÂŁ1.4M of EPSRC funding for research under the project “Wearable and Autonomous Computing for Future Smart Cities: A Platform Grant”. The focus of this Platform Grant is the combination of wearable systems networked with smart city and building management systems,…

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Continuing Success for ARM-ECS Research Centre

21st March 2017

The ARM-ECS Research Centre was founded in 2008, and is a collaboration between researchers in the Department of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, and ARM Research, Cambridge. On the back of winning the NMI University Research Group of the Year award at the end of 2015,…

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Power efficient electronics research innovation is featured in the ACM TechNews

22nd February 2017

Research from the ARM-ECS Research Centre, on power-efficient electronics, has been accepted for publication at the prestigious ISSCC 2017 conference and featured in ACM Tech News. Researchers from the ARM-ECS Centre have presented a paper at the prestigious International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, the world’s foremost forum…

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Paper on Supply-Independent Oscillator Design Accepted at ISSCC 2017

26th October 2016

An ARM-ECS paper describing a cutting-edge design for supply-independent oscillators has been accepted for presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference 2017. An ARM-ECS paper describing a low-power design for supply-independent relaxation oscillator has been accepted for presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference 2017. This paper, entitled…

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Related Projects

Off and On Again: Optimising Intermittently-Powered Systems
See Project +
Energy Harvesting for IoT Devices
See Project +
Wearable and Autonomous Computing for Future Smart Cities
See Project +
Low-Power Flip Flops
See Project +
Energy Harvesting and Integrated Power Conversion for Micro-Scale Sensor Nodes
See Project +

Related Technologies

Fused: Full-System Simulation of Energy-Driven Computers

Fused is a full-system simulator for modelling energy-driven computers. To accurately model the interplay between energy-availability, power consumption, and execution; Fused models energy and execution in a closed feedback loop. The power model is based on recording high-level events (memory accesses, peripheral operations etc.) and states (modules on/off, peripheral operation modes etc.), and computing the instantaneous power consumption at runtime. Simultaneously, external circuitry such as e.g. energy storage, power supply and power management is modelled. The power consumption, power supply, and energy-availability, is then used to calculate the supply voltage, which in turn is monitored by the modeled microcontroller. In…

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Pipistrelle-4

Pipistrelle-4, taped-out at the end of May 2017, is the latest in a series of low-energy sensor-system chips. The chip includes circuit/system ideas from multiple PhD research students and industry, focusing on an energy and performance optimised SRAM bitcell, low-area overhead energy-efficient flip-flops and standard-cells. The chip was taped-out during Yunpeng Cai’s internship at Arm Cambridge, and includes circuits to validate his novel flip-flop design which has now been patented. The prototype chips were received at the end of September 2017, and tested successfully.

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