UCLA

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has enabled everyday objects to be instrumented and operated in such a way that they can be queried and controlled over the Internet. While the 1990s saw the connection of nearly 1 billion users to the Internet, and the 2000s saw an increase to 2 billion users through the proliferation of mobile phones, it is estimated that by 2020, IoT will introduce an additional 26 billion units to the Internet ecosystem.

IoT systems have been developed and envisioned for numerous environments and applications and their rapid emergence has introduced a number of unique opportunities and challenges in the space of hardware design. For example, the application of these systems in a variety of environments has lead to an increased need for new low power design solutions, specifically for remote and battery operated devices.

While low energy design is paramount for the successful deployment of resource-constrained IoT devices, their often remote and physically accessible nature has also contributed to rendering traditional cryptographic techniques insufficient to address all of the security concerns surrounding these systems. Hence, security has become an equally important requirement. These two desiderata, security and low energy, are often conflicting requirements by nature and present a challenging scenario for design. For example, higher levels of security often require larger amounts of energy consumption.

In this dissertation we present energy-aware design methods for the synthesis and security of IoT systems. We present novel energy reduction and delay minimization techniques applied on integrated circuit subsystems of IoT applications in order to enable near-threshold computing operation with maximal energy savings and minimal speed degradation. We also present semantics-based techniques for the organization and coordination of system components in order to both reduce energy consumption as well as increase energy harvester production. Finally, we demonstrate new techniques for securing IoT systems, including intellectual property protection, trusted remote sensing, and trusted chip selection.