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Programmable threshold sensing in wireless devices using Ising dynamics

Nature Electronics volume 8, pages 529–536 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ising machines—comprising dissipatively coupled nodes capable of emulating the behaviour of ferromagnetic spins—can form analogue computing engines that surpass the sequential processing constraints of von Neumann architectures. However, the incorporation of Ising dynamics into radio-frequency wireless technologies remains limited, especially in terms of their potential to enhance wireless sensing capabilities. Here we report a passive wireless sensor that uses Ising dynamics to accurately implement threshold sensing. The device correlates the occurrence of violations in a sensed parameter with transitions in the coupling state of two parametric oscillators acting as Ising spins. As a result, the accuracy of the device is unaffected by distortions in its input and output signals due to multipath and is less prone to clutter caused by co-site interference. We illustrate the potential of the approach in temperature threshold sensing using a microfabricated lithium niobate microelectromechanical temperature sensor to couple two radio-frequency parametric oscillators, and show that such a system allows the sensor threshold to be wirelessly reprogrammed.

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Fig. 1: Operational principle of SPINs.
Fig. 2: Circuit analysis of SPINs.
Fig. 3: Even- and odd-mode competition.
Fig. 4: SPINs as temperature threshold sensors.
Fig. 5: Multiparameter sensing.

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Data availability

The data that supports the plots within this paper and the other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) CCF-FET program grant no. 2103351 (C.C.) and grant no. 2103091 (P.X.-L.F.), by the NSF CMMI program (A.A.) and by the CHARM program (A.A.). N.C. would like to acknowledge P. Labick for fruitful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Nano Systems Innovation (NanoSI), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Nicolas Casilli, Hussein M. E. Hussein, Ryan Tetro, Luca Colombo, Matteo Rinaldi & Cristian Cassella

  2. Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York City, NY, USA

    Seunghwi Kim & Andrea Alù

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Philip X.-L. Feng

  4. Physics Program, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York City, NY, USA

    Andrea Alù

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  1. Nicolas Casilli
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Contributions

C.C. conceived the idea. C.C. and P.X.-L.F. developed the research plan. N.C. designed and fabricated the circuit and system. L.C. and R.T. designed and fabricated the LiNbO3 devices. C.C. and N.C. contributed to the design of the experiments. N.C. performed the experiments and the corresponding circuit simulations. N.C., S.K. and A.A. developed the analytical model based on the coupled mode theory. N.C., C.C., S.K. and A.A. analysed the data. All authors contributed to writing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cristian Cassella.

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Supplementary Sections I–IX.

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Casilli, N., Kim, S., Hussein, H.M.E. et al. Programmable threshold sensing in wireless devices using Ising dynamics. Nat Electron 8, 529–536 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01392-4

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