Power consumption has become the most important design goal in a wide range of electronic systems especially when dealing with smart/autonomous sensing systems for application domains such as Internet of Things (IoT), Wearable Devices, Robotics, and Prosthetics. The continuing device scaling and ever-increasing demand for higher computing power are two driving forces toward ultra-low power design strategies: for instance, the typical power consumption in some current sensory systems is on the order of 100 milliwatts and is expected to be 100 times more in order to respond to the application demands. Seeking to improve the energy efficiency, designers have turned to optimization methods in several ways from system level down to transistor device level. On the other hand, power supply represents a limiting factor in smart sensory systems whose form factor constrains battery size. Endowing the sensory systems with harvesters that collect energy from the environment will represent a promising solution to achieve the long-life goal for truly energy-autonomous (selfpowered) devices. In this perspective, this special session aims to illustrate the challenges facing designers of highperformance and energy-efficient/autonomous circuits for sensory systems. It will address a cross-layer approach and span various methodologies, techniques, and architectures paving the way towards Energy Efficient Autonomous Smart Sensory Systems.

After decades during which clocked logic has imposed its discipline across all fields of digital design, there is today a world-wide resurgence of interest in asynchronous logic design techniques, so that asynchronous logic can be expected to win niches in the digital electronics business within the next few years. The main reason is because an asynchronous design paradigm is capable of addressing the impact of increased process variability, power and thermal bottlenecks, high fault rates, aging, and scalability issues prevalent in emerging densely packed integrated circuits. Starting from the current limitations of synchronous/clocked design and from the common arguments for migrating to an asynchronous design style, this special session provides a pragmatic survey on the state-of-the-art in asynchronous design techniques and in one of its most promising emerging application areas, namely Globally Asynchronous Locally Synchronous (GALS) systems. Thanks to this special session, NGCAS audience will be able to stay technically up-to-date about one of the hottest debates in the digital design community: does clockless design really have a future as an effect of the growing clock distribution concerns and/or of the growing need for fine-grained and adaptive power management? Far from providing a comprehensive answer, the special session aims to keep the debate alive by presenting the latest research outcomes from leading European experts in the field, spanning from challenging asynchronous circuit design issues to novel system design concepts and prototypes, going through emerging clockess communication architectures and associated synthesis tool flows.

The introduction of new sensing materials from the field of nanotechnology is paving the way towards improved performance gas sensing systems. Gas sensors provide a vast array of functionality, from informing people about their environment, air quality, and safety, to diagnosing health conditions through breath analysis. Chemoresistive solid-state gas sensors are based on the change in the electrical conductivity of the gas sensitive layer. The typical components of chemoresistive sensors are a heater, temperature sensor and the sensing material. Thus, an electronic interface circuit is required to drive the heater, control the temperature in the sensing area, and measure the changes in the resistance of the sensing material in the presence of gases. Other consolidated electrical interfacing techniques are based on Polymers, Carbon Nanotubes or moisture absorbing specific materials, where usually resistance and capacitance values have to be read-out. In essence, the function of the electronic interface circuit is to extract the resistance of the sensor signal, amplify it, and often convert it into the digital domain. The sensing materials of many solid-state gas sensors operate at high temperatures, as in the case of metal oxide (MOX) gas sensors, increasing dramatically power consumption thus restricting its integration into smartphones. Besides, the gas sensing interface electronics needs to cover the wide dynamic ranges of the sensing material (more than 4- decades). This adds challenges in ensuring that the circuitry keeps the operating voltages within the working range and preserving accuracy. Another problem arises which is the long measuring time when converting high resistance values, thus, limiting the speed of such interface circuit. Due to the continuous scaling in CMOS technologies, interfacing the sensor signals poses serious challenges in designing circuit architectures with energy saving, and area optimization. The objective of the special session is to highlight new design approaches and methods in the field of gas sensing at circuit and architectural level for driving, signal conditioning/compensation and readout the sensor resistive signal. The proposed solutions aim to mitigate the significant issues inherent in gas sensors interface circuits resulting in a low power, robust and optimized interface.

Prosthetics has made significant progress to enable tetraplegic patients or amputees to restore some of the original body functions and appearance and reintegrate effectively in the society. Modern prostheses are more and more conceived to reproduce functional as well as aesthetic features of the lost limb, thus fostering improvements in prosthesis design and closed-loop control, in order to meet prosthesis user’s needs. Myoelectric prostheses are externally powered artificial limbs controlled with electrical signals naturally generated by muscles (EMG), thereby restoring lost motor functions. The association between prosthesis and muscle provides an intuitive connection between the brain and the prosthesis, but this connection is unidirectional (open loop). A bilateral communication between the brain and the periphery is essential for body movement learning and execution. Although highly dexterous and functional myoelectric prostheses are available, their use remains limited due to the lack of sensory feedback. Providing sensory feedback to the prosthesis user is an important goal and a key point in active research since it can improve the utility as well as facilitate the embodiment of the assistive system. In addition, it is cited as an essential requirement by prosthesis users. In this perspective, this special session aims to present recent achievements in sensing and stimulation systems to restore the sense of touch in prosthetics. It will mainly focus on (i) tactile data acquisition, processing and coding, (ii) stimulation circuits and techniques for tactile information transmission to the prosthesis user, and (iii) new implementation systems to fulfill the requirements for reliable and efficient restoration of the sense of touch.