1. Smart electronic interfaces for harvesters of parasit vibration energy

Harvesting of energy available in environment and its conversion to the electricity is one of the solutions to provide a sustainable supply to embedded microsystems. (e.g., wireless sensors).

We are interested in electricity generators which take the energy from parasitic external vibrations. Potential applications are: sensors in aircrafts, cars, industrial machines... The harvesters we study use variable capacitors to convert mechanical energy into the electrical energy. Such electromechanical transducers are fabricated in silicon micromachining technologies and require complex conditioning electronics. Our research is focused on the architecture of the conditioning circuits, on the optimal algorithmes allowing to maximise the energy yield and on behaviouar modeling of the whole system.

This topic is developped in close cooperation with the ESYCOM laboratory (Philippe Basset, ESIEE Paris) which contributes with design and fabrication of the MEMS resonators and transducers needed for the harvester and with the CAS Group of University College Dublin, Irelande (Elena Blokhina). Together with this lab, LIP6 participates in the national research project SESAM whose goal is a design of multisource electricity generator able to make use of ambient energies of several natures (thermical, solar, vibrational, etc...).

This topic was funded by the French National Agency of Research (ANR) through the grant SESAM, in collaboration with CEA-LETI and TIMA Lab. Four PhD projects contributed to the development of this topic.

Official site of the project SESAM - Web page of the research topic "Energy harvesting"

2. Synchronisation and phase synthesis in complex SOCs

Synchronisation between spacially distributed oscillators has many applications in telecommunications and in integrated architectures. We are interested in a network of oscilaltor coupled in the phase domaine: such a structure is often called "coupled PLL network" or "vector PLL". It can have an immediate use for a generation of a global clock in large and complex synchronous Systems On Chip (e.g., multiprocessor systems).

This research were founded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through the grants HODISS and HERODOTOS. This research was a part of the PhD projects of Eldar Zianbetov (UPMC-LIP6) and Chuan Shan (UPMC-LIP6). This research was carried out in collaboration with CEA-LETI (Eric Colinet, Olivier Billoint and Edith Beigné), Supélec Paris (Jérôme Juillard) and Ecole Centrale de Lyon (Gérard Scorletti, Anton Korniienko).

Official web site of the HODISS project Official web site of the HERODOTOS project

Presently, this topic is studied in collaboration with the CAS group of the University College Dublin (Elena Blokhina). The main focus of the work is the mathematical modeling of nonlinear behaviour of digital phase synthesizers and collective nonlinear phenomena in network of oscillators coupled in the phase domain. This subjet is addressed by the PhD project of Eugene Koskin (University College Dublin)supervised by Elena Blokhina and co-supervised by myself.

• Web page of "phase synthesis" research topic