Impact of charge pump design choices on sustainability for IoT applications

Abstract

This work presents a comprehensive study on the design, implementation, and sustainability assessment of a modified version of a Dickson charge pump circuit. The circuit is implemented to operate at 1.2 V and achieves an output of 3.6 V used for Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The design is implemented for two different load conditions- a lighter load of 1 μA and a slightly heavier load of 50 μA. Conventional performance metrics are calculated and com- pared to observe the electrical behavior of both designs. In addition, this work uses a novel sustainability-aware framework to account for the carbon emissions involved. The Embodied Carbon Footprint (eCFP) metric accounts for the fabrication-related emissions, while the Operational Carbon Footprint (oCFP) metric captures the emissions during the operation of the design over its lifecycle. This work benchmarks both electrical and sustainability indicators to analyze the impact of design choices on sustainability and offers a trade-off between performance and carbon footprint for a design.