FPGA based application specific processing for sensor nodes

Energy efficient sensor nodes are among the rapidly expanding applications for embedded systems technology. Typically, the processing resources in sensor nodes are based on programmable micro-controllers and digital signal processors, and the same processing architecture is used regardless of the actual task of the node. This regularly results in at least an order of magnitude over-provisioning of resources, and in higher power consumption than would be needed by tightly application specific processing solutions. Currently, experiments show that Flash FPGA technology enables implementing precisely provisioned processing for sensor nodes with energy efficiency that rivals off-the-shelf processor solutions. The expected competitiveness originates from savings in silicon real-estate, and lowered software overheads, as inherently parallel tasks can be offloaded to dedicated hardware accelerators on the same die with a microcontroller unit, and radio baseband. The results pave the way for a novel type of self-powered sensor nodes whose processing resources are configured according to their tasks.