Near Zero Energy RF and Sensor Operations (N-ZERO)
Abstract
The Near Zero Power RF and Sensor Operations (N-ZERO) program will investigate the innovative technologies required to extend the lifetimes of remotely-deployed sensors from months to years. Today's state-of-the-art sensors can be pre-placed and remain dormant until awoken by an external trigger or stimulus. However, the active electronics that monitor for external triggers consume power, limiting sensor lifetimes to between weeks and months. N-ZERO seeks to replace these electronics with passive or extremely low-power devices that continuously monitor the environment and wake up active electronics upon detection of a specific trigger. This would eliminate or significantly reduce standby power consumption, ensuring that sensor lifetimes are limited only by the power required to process and communicate confirmed events. In doing so, N-ZERO could enable wireless sensors with drastically increased mission life and help meet DoD's unfulfilled need for a persistent, event-driven sensing capability. To enable this possibility, N-ZERO's basic research component will consider highly innovative sensors and sensor architectures as well as signal processing and digitization technologies with near-zero power consumption. In particular, the program will explore and develop a fundamental understanding of the trade space between power consumption, the minimum detectable signal, and the probability of falsely detecting a trigger. An applied research component is budgeted under PE 0602716E, Project ELT-01.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Accomplishment
- Publication Date
- Oct 01, 2019
- Source ID
- 481d9eeed7c3ea037ebcf9336f354d67