WO2021115205A1

WO2021115205A1 - Wake-up chip and wake-up system

Info

Publication number: WO2021115205A1
Application number: PCT/CN2020/133880
Authority: WO
Inventors: 叶乐; 王志轩; 张昊; 王阳元; 黄如
Original assignee: 杭州未名信科科技有限公司; 浙江省北大信息技术高等研究院
Priority date: 2019-12-09
Filing date: 2020-12-04
Publication date: 2021-06-17
Also published as: CN111124511A

Abstract

Disclosed in the present invention are a wake-up chip and a wake-up system. The wake-up chip has no internal clock and comprises: a signal processing module used for receiving a digital/analog signal of a sensor in real time, preprocessing the digital/analog signal, and then sending a first processing result to a logic determining module; and the logic determining module used for determining whether the first processing result satisfies a preset wake-up condition, and if yes, outputting a wake-up signal. By providing a wake-up chip as a coprocessor, and adapting various high-performance main processing modules at subsequent stages, the present invention has a wide application prospect in the field of Internet of things. The wake-up chip provided by the present invention has universality due to the fact that the wake-up chip can cover the types of an analog signal and a digital signal, and low-power consumption basic preprocessing can be performed on these types of signals. In addition, all the internal modules of the wake-up chip are triggered by corresponding signals thereof, and the wake-up chip has a long-term standby low-power-consumption property and also has a high event-capturing rate property without missing random sparse events.

Description

Wake-up chip and wake-up system

Technical field

The invention relates to the technical field of integrated circuits, in particular to a wake-up chip and a wake-up system.

Background technique

With the rapid development of mobile electronic devices (such as wearable medical devices and implantable medical devices) based on the Internet of Things technology, they have put forward strict requirements on the power consumption of internal chips. Limited by factors such as cost, size and weight, these devices often use small-volume and small-capacity batteries. In order to avoid unacceptable material and labor costs caused by frequent battery replacement, the internal chip is required to have extremely low power consumption to make the device Can continue to work for years or even decades without the need to replace the battery. In addition, this kind of equipment usually works under the condition of random and sparse events. The so-called "random" means that the events contained in the signal detected by the sensor occur randomly (for example: accidental onset of epilepsy patients), and the so-called "sparse" means The interval between events may be long. Under the background of random sparseness, the internal chip is required to be continuously turned on to handle all events that may occur anytime and anywhere. Therefore, it is a challenge to develop a very low-power chip for this application scenario. .

At present, the power consumption is saved by using the chip's internal clock to realize the periodic wake-up work mode. However, this method can reduce power consumption to a certain extent, but in order not to miss random events, a higher periodic wake-up frequency is usually required Let the chip capture every event as much as possible, and this frequency is much higher than the occurrence rate of sparse events, so this method will still generate a lot of useless power consumption.

Summary of the invention

The purpose of the present invention is to provide a wake-up chip and a wake-up system aiming at the above-mentioned shortcomings of the prior art, and the purpose is achieved by the following technical solutions.

The first aspect of the present invention provides a wake-up chip which has no internal clock and includes:

The signal processing module is used to receive the digital/analog signal from the external sensor in real time, and after preprocessing the digital/analog signal, send the obtained first processing result to the logic judgment module;

The logic judgment module is used to judge whether the first processing result meets a preset wake-up condition, and if so, output a wake-up signal.

The second aspect of the present invention provides a wake-up system, the system includes a main processing module and the wake-up chip described in the first aspect:

The main processing module is configured to switch from the sleep mode to the wake-up mode when receiving the wake-up signal output by the wake-up chip, and control the wake-up chip to switch to the sleep mode, so that the wake-up chip stops working;

The main processing module is further configured to receive digital/analog signals from external sensors, and process the digital/analog signals to obtain a second processing result;

Wherein, the processing power consumption for obtaining the first processing result is lower than the processing power consumption for obtaining the second processing result.

In the embodiments of this application, by proposing an ultra-low-power wake-up chip as a co-processor with wake-up function, and adapting various high-performance main processing modules at the subsequent stage, it has great advantages in the field of Internet of Things. Application prospects. Since the wake-up chip proposed in the present invention can cover analog signals and digital signal types, and can perform some basic pre-processing with low power consumption on these types of signals, it has universality. In addition, the internal modules of the wake-up chip are all triggered by their corresponding signals. On the one hand, it has the characteristics of long-term standby and low power consumption, and on the other hand, it has the characteristics of high event capture rate that does not miss random sparse events.

Description of the drawings

The drawings described here are used to provide a further understanding of the present invention and constitute a part of the present invention. The exemplary embodiments of the present invention and the description thereof are used to explain the present invention, and do not constitute an improper limitation of the present invention. In the attached picture:

Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of a microcontroller chip in a periodic wake-up mode in the related art;

Fig. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a wake-up chip according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of a wake-up system according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed ways

The exemplary embodiments will be described in detail here, and examples thereof are shown in the accompanying drawings. When the following description refers to the accompanying drawings, unless otherwise indicated, the same numbers in different drawings represent the same or similar elements. The implementation manners described in the following exemplary embodiments do not represent all implementation manners consistent with the present invention. On the contrary, they are merely examples of devices and methods consistent with some aspects of the present invention as detailed in the appended claims.

The terms used in the present invention are only for the purpose of describing specific embodiments, and are not intended to limit the present invention. The singular forms of "a", "said" and "the" used in the present invention and the appended claims are also intended to include plural forms, unless the context clearly indicates other meanings. It should also be understood that the term "and/or" as used herein refers to and includes any or all possible combinations of one or more associated listed items.

It should be understood that although the terms first, second, third, etc. may be used in the present invention to describe various information, the information should not be limited to these terms. These terms are only used to distinguish the same type of information from each other. For example, without departing from the scope of the present invention, the first information may also be referred to as second information, and similarly, the second information may also be referred to as first information. Depending on the context, the word "if" as used herein can be interpreted as "when" or "when" or "in response to determination".

As shown in Figure 1, MCU (Microcontroller Unit, microcontroller), crystal oscillator (XO), clock circuit (CLK) and power management unit (PMU, Power Management Unit) constitute a periodic wake-up module, so that the computing core (Core) has The power consumption of standby and data processing, that is, sleep for a period of time, the power consumption is very small, and the power consumption is normal for a period of work.

This periodic wake-up mode can reduce power consumption to a certain extent, but in order not to miss randomly occurring events, a higher periodic wake-up frequency is required so that the chip can capture every event as much as possible. This wake-up frequency should be higher than The occurrence rate of sparse events, so there will still be a lot of useless power consumption.

Different from the periodic wake-up mode, whether the chip works in the event-driven mode depends entirely on whether an event arrives. When no event occurs, the chip is silent for a long time, and the power consumption is extremely low. When an event occurs, the chip starts to work. Therefore, it has the potential of ultra-low power consumption suitable for emerging application scenarios.

At present, event-driven chips in some special fields can only process certain types of special signals, such as in the field of voice signal recognition and wake-up, but for the wide range of application scenarios of the Internet of Things, the chip may need to process various signals, such as voice and image , Text, etc., and may need to perform various types of processing on the signal, such as amplitude, time, etc. Therefore, the chip needs to have a certain degree of versatility to meet various needs.

However, so far, there has not been a chip implementation for IoT scenarios that has both extremely low power consumption and versatility.

In order to solve the above technical problems, the present invention proposes a wake-up chip with ultra-low power consumption. As shown in FIG. 2, the wake-up chip includes a signal processing module 210 and a logic judgment module 220, and there is no internal clock;

The signal processing module 210 is configured to receive digital/analog signals from external sensors in real time, and after preprocessing the digital/analog signals, send the obtained first processing result to the logic judgment module 220;

The logic judgment module 220 is used to judge whether the first processing result meets a preset wake-up condition, and if so, output a wake-up signal.

Among them, the wake-up chip can receive signals collected by various types of sensors, and pre-process the signals, which are triggered by the signals at the sensor terminal to work to ensure that any random event is not missed.

It is worth noting that the preprocessing of the signal in the wake-up chip is only some basic processing, and the power consumption is very small.

Based on the above description, it can be seen that by adopting a single ultra-low-power wake-up chip as a co-processor with wake-up function, it can be adapted to various high-performance main processing modules at the subsequent stage, which has great application prospects in the field of Internet of Things . Because it can cover analog signals and digital signal types, and can perform some low-power basic pre-processing on these types of signals, the chip has versatility. In addition, the internal modules of the wake-up chip are all triggered by their corresponding signals. On the one hand, it has the characteristics of long-term standby and low power consumption, and on the other hand, it has the characteristics of high event capture rate that does not miss random sparse events.

In one embodiment, as shown in Figure 2, the signal processing module in the wake-up chip abstracts a variety of basic signal processing functional units, including a width detection functional unit 211, an amplitude detection functional unit 212, and an instantaneous slope detection functional unit 213. Average slope detection function unit 214, peak and valley detection function unit 215, feature interval detection function unit 216, signal pattern recognition function unit 217, classification function unit 218, and digital head recognition function unit 219;

Wherein, the width detection function unit 211 is used to detect the time width of the digital/analog signal in the preset amplitude interval;

The amplitude detection function unit 212 is used to detect the amplitude of the digital/analog signal;

The instantaneous slope detection function unit 213 is used to detect the instantaneous slope of the digital/analog signal;

The average slope detection function unit 214 is used to detect the average slope of the digital/analog signal;

The peak and valley detection function unit 215 is used to detect the peak value and the valley value of the digital/analog signal;

The feature interval detection function unit 216 is configured to detect the time interval between signals with the same feature in the digital/analog signal;

The signal pattern recognition function unit 217 is used to match the digital/analog signal with the preset signal to obtain a matching result;

The classification function unit 218 is used to determine the category of the digital/analog signal, and to match the category with a preset category to obtain a matching result;

The digital head recognition function unit 219 is configured to match the first preset number of digits in the digital signal with the preset number field to obtain a matching result;

It is worth noting that the wake-up chip is a programmable chip, and the parameters or working status of each functional unit can be configured through offline programming or online dynamic programming, that is, the wake-up chip can turn on or off a functional unit according to the received configuration instruction , And configure the logic to determine the wake-up conditions in the module. Therefore, the wake-up chip can present corresponding functions as the demand changes in real time, with high versatility.

Among them, the offline programming mode refers to the pre-configured internal parameters before waking up the chip to work, and the online dynamic programming mode refers to the reverse reconfiguration of the wake-up chip by other external devices during the waking up of the chip.

It can be seen that, when the signal processing module performs preprocessing on the digital/analog signal, it uses the functional unit in the on state to perform the preprocessing on the digital/analog signal.

It should be noted that the wake-up condition in the logic judgment module 220 may be a threshold condition of a single functional unit in the signal processing module 210, or a logical combination of the threshold conditions of multiple functional units, such as AND, OR, and NOT. For example, the wake-up condition in the logic judgment module can be the AND logical combination of the amplitude threshold of the amplitude detection function unit and the instantaneous slope threshold of the instantaneous slope detection function unit, that is, the wake-up signal is output only when the amplitude threshold and the instantaneous slope threshold are met at the same time.

Those skilled in the art can understand that the implementation of the various functional units described above can be implemented by hardware, software, or a combination of software and hardware, which is not limited in the present invention.

The following further introduces the concept of the present invention by combining the low-power wake-up chip shown in FIG. 2 with the subsequent high-performance main processing module to form a low-power "wake-sleep" system, that is, a wake-up system.

The wake-up system shown in Figure 3 is based on a combined architecture of co-processing and main processing. The wake-up chip for co-processing is triggered by various random sparse event signals collected by sensors. It preprocesses the signals and makes logical judgments. The module decides whether to wake up the main processing module for high-performance main processing to ensure that any random event is not missed.

The main processing module is used to switch the working mode from the sleep mode to the wake-up mode when receiving the wake-up signal output by the wake-up chip, and control the wake-up chip to switch to the off mode, so that the wake-up chip stops working and takes over the input wake-up chip Digital/analog signal;

Further, the main processing module is also used to receive digital/analog signals from external sensors, and perform more advanced processing on the digital/analog signals to obtain a second processing result.

Wherein, the processing power consumption for obtaining the first processing result in the wake-up chip is lower than the processing power consumption for obtaining the second processing result in the main processing module.

In an example, as shown in Figure 3, the main processing module can be MCU, NPU (Neural-network Processing Unit, embedded neural network processor), DSP (digital signal processor, digital signal processor), ADC (Analog -to-Digital Converter, any one or more combinations of PMU.

It should be noted that for the online dynamic programming process of the wake-up chip, the main processing module can modify the wake-up condition in the wake-up chip according to the second processing result obtained, or/and modify the signal in the wake-up chip according to the second processing result obtained Process the on/off status of each functional unit in the module.

In one embodiment, the main processing module is also used to determine whether the second processing result meets the mode switching condition, and if so, control the wake-up chip to switch to the on mode, and switch the working mode from the wake-up mode to the sleep mode, thereby entering Sleep state to maintain low power consumption.

Among them, if the second processing result meets the mode switching condition, it means that the work of the main processing module is completed.

Exemplarily, the mode switching conditions can be set according to actual needs.

It can be seen from the above description that the working mode of the entire wake-up system is an event-driven mode, that is, the main processing module is driven to wake up when the event arrives to process the event signal. When the event does not come, it stays in a silent state for a long time, and the power consumption of the entire wake-up system is completely Depending on the coprocessor with low power consumption to wake up the chip, this mode does not miss any events, conforms to the Internet of Things field with the characteristics of random sparse events, and meets the needs of low power consumption.

Those skilled in the art will easily think of other embodiments of the present invention after considering the specification and practicing the invention disclosed herein. The present invention is intended to cover any variations, uses, or adaptive changes of the present invention. These variations, uses, or adaptive changes follow the general principles of the present invention and include common knowledge or conventional technical means in the technical field not disclosed by the present invention. . The description and the embodiments are to be regarded as exemplary only, and the true scope and spirit of the present invention are pointed out by the following claims.

It should also be noted that the terms "include", "include" or any other variants thereof are intended to cover non-exclusive inclusion, so that a process, method, commodity or equipment including a series of elements not only includes those elements, but also includes Other elements that are not explicitly listed, or also include elements inherent to such processes, methods, commodities, or equipment. If there are no more restrictions, the element defined by the sentence "including a..." does not exclude the existence of other identical elements in the process, method, commodity, or equipment that includes the element.

The above are only the preferred embodiments of the present invention and are not intended to limit the present invention. Any modification, equivalent replacement, improvement, etc. made within the spirit and principle of the present invention shall be included in the present invention. Within the scope of protection.

Claims

A wake-up chip, characterized in that the wake-up chip has no internal clock, and includes:

The signal processing module is used to receive the digital/analog signal from the external sensor in real time, and after preprocessing the digital/analog signal, send the obtained first processing result to the logic judgment module;

The logic judgment module is used to judge whether the first processing result meets a preset wake-up condition, and if so, output a wake-up signal.
The wake-up chip according to claim 1, wherein the signal processing module comprises:

Amplitude detection function unit, used to detect the amplitude of digital/analog signals;

Instantaneous slope detection function unit, used to detect the instantaneous slope of digital/analog signals;

Average slope detection function unit, used to detect the average slope of digital/analog signals;

Peak and valley detection functional unit, used to detect the peak and valley values of digital/analog signals;

The width detection function unit is used to detect the time width of the digital/analog signal in the preset amplitude interval;

The feature interval detection function unit is used to detect the time interval between signals with the same feature in the digital/analog signal;

The signal pattern recognition function unit is used to match the digital/analog signal with the preset signal to obtain the matching result;

The classification function unit is used to determine the category of the digital/analog signal, and to match the category with the preset category to obtain the matching result;

The digital head recognition function unit is used to match the first preset number of digits in the digital signal with the preset number field to obtain a matching result;

Among them, each functional unit is turned on or off according to the received configuration instruction.
The wake-up chip according to claim 2, wherein the signal processing module is specifically configured to preprocess the digital/analog signal by using a functional unit in an on state.
A wake-up system, characterized in that the system comprises a main processing module and the wake-up chip according to any one of claims 1-3:

The main processing module is configured to switch the working mode from the sleep mode to the wake-up mode when receiving the wake-up signal output by the wake-up chip, and control the wake-up chip to switch to the off mode, so that the wake-up chip stops jobs;

The main processing module is further configured to receive digital/analog signals from external sensors, and process the digital/analog signals to obtain a second processing result;

Wherein, the processing power consumption for obtaining the first processing result is lower than the processing power consumption for obtaining the second processing result.
The system according to claim 4, wherein the main processing module includes a microcontroller MCU, an embedded neural network processor NPU, a digital signal processor DSP, an analog/digital converter ADC, and a power management unit PMU. Any one or more combinations of.
The system according to claim 4, wherein the main processing module is further configured to modify the wake-up condition in the wake-up chip according to the second processing result.
The system according to claim 4, wherein the main processing module is further configured to modify the on/off state of each functional unit in the signal processing module in the wake-up chip according to the second processing result.
The system according to claim 4, wherein the main processing module is further configured to determine whether the second processing result meets the mode switching condition, and if it does, control the wake-up chip to switch to the on mode, and Switch the working mode from wake-up mode to sleep mode.