Low-power Audio Input Enhancements for Portable Devices

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Dr. David Anderson, for his guidance, support, endurance, and encouragement during my staying at Georgia Tech. He has always been supportive of me not only when I made progress but also when I made mistakes. I am also deeply impressed with his dedication to research and students. I am happy to say that this research is only a small part of what I've learned from him. I also would like to thank to Dr. Paul Hasler for his extensive guidance on my continuous-time audio signal processing research. I am deeply impressed by the depth of his knowledge in both analog signal processing and neuro-morphic signal processing. This research would not have been possible without the leadership and the support of Dr. Anderson and Dr. Hasler. I was fortunate to be a member of the CADSP research group. In particular, I've enjoyed working with David Graham and Rich Ellis and would like to thank them for their constructive feedback, outstanding achievements on VLSI circuit layout, measurement, and testing, and especially their willingness to share invaluable experimental results with me. I also had an opportunity to work closely with Daniel Allred, Venketash Khrishnan, and Walter Huang. I would like to thank them for rewarding research experience that we shared together. I am grateful to my parents and other family members for their love and support. Most of all, I thank my lovely wife, Jaeeun, and beloved son, Taehwan, for their endless love, support, and perseverance during my time at Georgia Tech.