Industry Expert Blogs

Changing the batteries. A routine, commonplace task familiar to children and adults. Just about manageable if it is needed once a month on household devices. But what if your devices are deployed in their thousands in remote and inaccessible locations? Suddenly a one-month battery life does not look so good. To translate this problem into a research opportunity - enter DARPA’s N-ZERO program.

The N-ZERO program sponsors fundamental research into zero-power or low-power sensing devices. Sensors that can operate using just the energy of the sensed signal, like an infrared radiation detecting switch (Figure 1), or low-power wake up devices like a 12nW acoustic classifier that listens constantly before periodically triggering a more powerful processor.