Internet-of-Things Sensor Nodes Inspired by Nature: an ERC Grant for the SWIMS project

A newly funded ERC Synergy proposal unveils a groundbreaking bio-inspired vision for the future of smart wireless multimodal sensory systems

The European Research Council (ERC) will fund the project SWIMS, Stochastic Spiking Wireless Multimodal Sensory Systems, at 13.5 million Euros under the Synergy program.

The project proposes a veritable paradigm shift in the design, the hardware and the operation of future Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensing systems, towards substantial energy savings and minimization of their environmental impact.

Inspired by the intimate workings of a small insect in the biological world, the approach focuses on devising a radically novel end-to-end analog spiking neuromorphic concept for the SWIMS IoT nodes.

“Imagine a honeybee. It’s an ambient monitoring device with light and sound sensors, a brain of about one million neurons and social communication skills; all packed in a few cubic mm using only about 10 microWatts of power. Their brains do not work with binary-coded time-discretized information like in generic digital computers. They modulate trains of analog spikes (i.e. continuous in time and amplitude) over specialized neurons and synapses. Their biological sensors are spiking too, and to communicate, the bees use acoustic pulses as well.” says ICTEAM Professor Denis Flandre, who heads UCLouvain’s contribution to the project.

On the contrary, the present analog and digital functions of IoT nodes for sensing, processing and communicating information are engineered separately so that significant margins and overheads are required to assemble them in a full system.  
To reach the highest energy efficiency as required to deploy such IoT nodes at a large scale while preserving sustainability, in SWIMS, the researchers will then model, experiment and optimize innovative solutions to the fundamental challenges of generating, analyzing and conveying analog stochastic (i.e. imprecise or noisy) spiking signals, all the way from the sensors to the internet.

The project is made possible by the synergistic efforts of four distinguished scientific leaders: Professor Gerhard P. Fettweis (TU Dresden), Professor Denis Flandre (UCLouvain), Professor Adrian Ionescu (EPFL), and Professor Elisabetta Chicca (Uni Groningen), each an expert in signal communication, electronic sensors and circuits, nanotechnology and materials, and bio-inspired modelling, respectively.

Key Advancements in SWIMS:

• Advanced Sensor Arrays: Novel spiking sensor arrays based on VO2 and 2D-materials, covering infrared, ultraviolet, acoustic, and electromagnetic detections.
• Efficient Neural Networks: Tiny spiking neural networks for on-chip noise-resilient event detection using CMOS Fe-FET technology.
• Spiking Emitters: Event-driven wireless transmission through optimized spike modulation and task encoding.
• Biologically Inspired Modeling: Incorporation of stochastic effects in the system design connecting the spiking sensors to the emitters through recurrent neural networks.

Consortium lead and partners:

Prof. Gerhard P. Fettweis, TU Dresden (TUD), Germany (Coordinator)

Prof. Elisabetta Chicca, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Prof. Adrian M. Ionescu, EPFL, Switzerland

Prof. Denis Flandre, UCLouvain, has a background in micro- and nano-electronics engineering.

He supervises a group of about 10 researchers on the following research themes: (i) devices and analog/digital electronics circuits in Silicon-on-Insulator technology (SOI) for ultra-low power, RF communications, resistance to temperature and radiations; (ii) characterization, modelling and simulation of nanoelectronics devices in a wide range frequencies and harsh environments; (iii) sensors and microsystems: biomedical (physiological parameters, DNA, proteins, bacteria), physical-chemical (pressure, flow, gas, magnetic field, temperature, illumination, UV, radiations); (iv) photovoltaic cells on Silicon and thin films.

He has had numerous research collaborations with expert colleagues in his institution and beyond, across several multi-disciplinary fields surrounding his electronics domain, i.e. from material science, to biology, chemistry, physics, instrumentation, signal processing, communication, cryptography, noise and non-linear mathematical properties … to develop innovative high-performance electronics concepts for new applications and transfer them to the industry. He will capitalize on these assets and extend them towards new horizons for the successful realization of SWIMS.

^{SWIMS illustration : (c) Filippo Gander}