A 0.36 mm2 On-the-Fly I2C-to-SPI Converter for E-Textile Applications

This paper presents a 0.36-mm² I2C-to-SPI converter chip with on-the-fly conversion for E-textile applications. The on-the-fly operation eliminates the need for on-chip data buffers and clock generation, improving the area and power efficiency versus prior works. The die area is 7.33× smaller than commercially-available off-the-shelf (COTS) I2Cto-SPI converters, enabling it to integrate unobtrusively into E-textile applications. The chip supports conversion at ultra-fast I2C operating frequency up to 5 MHz while consuming only 0.379 mW of power. At the standard I2C speed of 400 kHz, it consumes 0.145 mW, which is 48× more power-efficient than commercially available I2C-to-SPI converters.