Hardware-Efficient Delta Sigma-Based Digital Signal Processing Circuits for the Internet-of-Things

This paper presents hardware-efficient Delta Sigma linear processing circuits for the next generation low-power VLSI devices in the Internet-of-things (IoT). We first propose the P-N (positive-negative) pair method to manipulate both the analog value and length of a first-order Delta Sigma bit sequence. We then present a binary counter method. Based on these methods, we develop Delta Sigma domain on-the-fly digital signal-processing circuits: the Delta Sigma sum adder, average adder and coefficient multiplier. The counter-based average adder can work with both first-order and higher-order Delta Sigma modulators and can also be used as a coefficient multiplier. The functionalities of the proposed circuits are verified by MATLAB simulation and FPGA implementation. We also compare the area and power between the proposed Delta Sigma adders and a conventional multi-bit adder by synthesizing both circuits in the IBM 0.18-μm technology. Synthesis results show that the proposed Delta Sigma processing circuits can extensively reduce circuit area and power. With 100 inputs, a Delta Sigma average adder saves 94% of the silicon area and 96% of the power compared to a multi-bit binary adder. The proposed circuits have the potential to be widely used in future IoT circuits.