Flexible Radios and Flexible Networks

Over the past decades the world has become increasingly connected, with communications driving both markets and social movements. Low power electronics, efficient communications, and better battery technology have all contributed to this revolution, but the cost and power required for these systems must be pushed further to make cheap, ubiquitous, seamless communication accessible to a wider community. In this talk I will discuss two engineering approaches to this problem. I will look at various approaches to drive the power down in radio networks that span across circuits and systems. I will also look at creative biologically inspired approaches to enabling very low power networks and IoT. Finally, I will discuss how by adding flexibility and building reconfigurable hardware, we can likewise build lower power and less costly consumer systems that can adapt across protocols and networks and work under changing device technologies.