For decades, scientists and engineers have been fascnated by cybernetic organisms, or cyborgs, that fuse artificial and natural systems. Cyborgs enable harnessing biological systems that have been honed by evolutionary forces over millennia to achieve astounding feats. Male moths can detect a single pheromone molecule, a sensitivity of roughly 10[to the power of]-21 grams. Thus, cyborgs can perform tasks at scales and efficiencies that would ordinarily seem incomprehensible. Semiconductor technology is central to realizing this vision offering powerful processing and communication capabilities, as well as low weight, small size, and deterministic control. A emerging cyborg application is moth flight control, where electronics and MEMS devices are placed on and within a moth to control flight direction. To receive commands on the moth, a lightweight, low power and low volume RX is required. This paper presents a pulsed ultrawideband (UWB) RX SoC designed for the stringent weight, volume and power constraints of the cyborg moth system.

Daly, D.C. et al. “A pulsed UWB receiver SoC for insect motion control.” Solid-State Circuits Conference – Digest of Technical Papers, 2009. ISSCC 2009. IEEE International. 2009. 200-201, 201a. © 2009 IEEE