scholarly journals A 0.6-µW Chopper Amplifier Using a Noise-Efficient DC Servo Loop and Squeezed-Inverter Stage for Power-Efficient Biopotential Sensing

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 2059
Author(s):  
Xuan Thanh Pham ◽  
Ngoc Tan Nguyen ◽  
Van Truong Nguyen ◽  
Jong-Wook Lee

To realize an ultra-low-power and low-noise instrumentation amplifier (IA) for neural and biopotential signal sensing, we investigate two design techniques. The first technique uses a noise-efficient DC servo loop (DSL), which has been shown to be a high noise contributor. The proposed approach offers several advantages: (i) both the electrode offset and the input offset are rejected, (ii) a large capacitor is not needed in the DSL, (iii) by removing the charge dividing effect, the input-referred noise (IRN) is reduced, (iv) the noise from the DSL is further reduced by the gain of the first stage and by the transconductance ratio, and (v) the proposed DSL allows interfacing with a squeezed-inverter (SQI) stage. The proposed technique reduces the noise from the DSL to 12.5% of the overall noise. The second technique is to optimize noise performance using an SQI stage. Because the SQI stage is biased at a saturation limit of 2VDSAT, the bias current can be increased to reduce noise while maintaining low power consumption. The challenge of handling the mismatch in the SQI stage is addressed using a shared common-mode feedback (CMFB) loop, which achieves a common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) of 105 dB. Using the proposed technique, a capacitively-coupled chopper instrumentation amplifier (CCIA) was fabricated using a 0.18-µm CMOS process. The measured result of the CCIA shows a relatively low noise density of 88 nV/rtHz and an integrated noise of 1.5 µVrms. These results correspond to a favorable noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 5.9 and a power efficiency factor (PEF) of 11.4.

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (06) ◽  
pp. 1550089 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yin Zhou ◽  
Xiaobo Wu ◽  
Peng Sun ◽  
Menglian Zhao

This paper presents a low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier (IA) intended for biopotential signal recordings. The IA is designed based on a capacitively-coupled topology, which achieves wide input common-mode range, high common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR) and low power consumption. To reduce low-frequency noise and output ripple at the same time, a combination of chopping and ping-pong auto-zeroing techniques, which is normally used in current-feedback IAs, is introduced for the capacitively-coupled topology in this paper. An intrinsic adverse effect of the proposed structure which causes additional ripple is analyzed. The DC electrode offset voltage is suppressed and the input impedance is boosted through feedback techniques. An improved switched-capacitor common mode feedback (SC CMFB) circuit is also presented. Test results show that the IA achieves an equivalent input-referred noise power spectrum density of 60 nV/sqrtHz and a noise efficiency factor (NEF) of 5.58. The bandwidth is 0.5 Hz to 10 kHz, covering most biopotential recording applications. The IA was implemented in 0.18-μm CMOS process. It occupies 0.27 mm2 core area and consumes 3.6 μA from a 1 V supply.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Chrisben Gladson ◽  
Adith Hari Narayana ◽  
V. Thenmozhi ◽  
M. Bhaskar

AbstractDue to the increased processing data rates, which is required in applications such as fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks, the battery power will discharge rapidly. Hence, there is a need for the design of novel circuit topologies to cater the demand of ultra-low voltage and low power operation. In this paper, a low-noise amplifier (LNA) operating at ultra-low voltage is proposed to address the demands of battery-powered communication devices. The LNA dual shunt peaking and has two modes of operation. In low-power mode (Mode-I), the LNA achieves a high gain ($$S21$$ S 21 ) of 18.87 dB, minimum noise figure ($${NF}_{min.}$$ NF m i n . ) of 2.5 dB in the − 3 dB frequency range of 2.3–2.9 GHz, and third-order intercept point (IIP3) of − 7.9dBm when operating at 0.6 V supply. In high-power mode (Mode-II), the achieved gain, NF, and IIP3 are 21.36 dB, 2.3 dB, and 13.78dBm respectively when operating at 1 V supply. The proposed LNA is implemented in UMC 180 nm CMOS process technology with a core area of $$0.40{\mathrm{ mm}}^{2}$$ 0.40 mm 2 and the post-layout validation is performed using Cadence SpectreRF circuit simulator.


2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avish Kosari ◽  
Jacob Breiholz ◽  
NingXi Liu ◽  
Benton Calhoun ◽  
David Wentzloff

This paper presents a power efficient analog front-end (AFE) for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal monitoring and arrhythmia diagnosis. The AFE uses low-noise and low-power circuit design methodologies and aggressive voltage scaling to satisfy both the low power consumption and low input-referred noise requirements of ECG signal acquisition systems. The AFE was realized with a three-stage fully differential AC-coupled amplifier, and it provides bio-signal acquisition with programmable gain and bandwidth. The AFE was implemented in a 130 nm CMOS process, and it has a measured tunable mid-band gain from 31 to 52 dB with tunable low-pass and high-pass corner frequencies. Under only 0.5 V supply voltage, it consumes 68 nW of power with an input-referred noise of 2.8 µVrms and a power efficiency factor (PEF) of 3.9, which makes it very suitable for energy-harvesting applications. The low-noise 68nW AFE was also integrated on a self-powered physiological monitoring System on Chip (SoC) that is used to capture ECG bio-signals. Heart rate extraction (R-R) detection algorithms were implemented and utilized to analyze the ECG data received by the AFE, showing the feasibility of <100 nW AFE for continuous ECG monitoring applications.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1760
Author(s):  
Folla Kamdem Jérôme ◽  
Wembe Tafo Evariste ◽  
Essimbi Zobo Bernard ◽  
Maria Liz Crespo ◽  
Andres Cicuttin ◽  
...  

The front-end electronics (FEE) of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is needed very low power consumption and higher readout bandwidth to match the low power requirement of its Short Strip application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) (SSA) and to handle a large number of pileup events in the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A low-noise, wide bandwidth, and ultra-low power FEE for the pixel-strip sensor of the CMS has been designed and simulated in a 0.35 µm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process. The design comprises a Charge Sensitive Amplifier (CSA) and a fast Capacitor-Resistor-Resistor-Capacitor (CR-RC) pulse shaper (PS). A compact structure of the CSA circuit has been analyzed and designed for high throughput purposes. Analytical calculations were performed to achieve at least 998 MHz gain bandwidth, and then overcome pileup issue in the High-Luminosity LHC. The spice simulations prove that the circuit can achieve 88 dB dc-gain while exhibiting up to 1 GHz gain-bandwidth product (GBP). The stability of the design was guaranteed with an 82-degree phase margin while 214 ns optimal shaping time was extracted for low-power purposes. The robustness of the design against radiations was performed and the amplitude resolution of the proposed front-end was controlled at 1.87% FWHM (full width half maximum). The circuit has been designed to handle up to 280 fC input charge pulses with 2 pF maximum sensor capacitance. In good agreement with the analytical calculations, simulations outcomes were validated by post-layout simulations results, which provided a baseline gain of 546.56 mV/MeV and 920.66 mV/MeV, respectively, for the CSA and the shaping module while the ENC (Equivalent Noise Charge) of the device was controlled at 37.6 e− at 0 pF with a noise slope of 16.32 e−/pF. Moreover, the proposed circuit dissipates very low power which is only 8.72 µW from a 3.3 V supply and the compact layout occupied just 0.0205 mm2 die area.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (02) ◽  
pp. 1450027 ◽  
Author(s):  
MINGYANG CHEN ◽  
MENGLIAN ZHAO ◽  
QING LIU ◽  
LU WANG ◽  
XIAOBO WU

An ultra-low power boost converter for energy harvesting applications is introduced in this brief. The idle power dissipation is reduced to 800 nW by using a novel output voltage detector (OVD) which is insensitive to temperature variation and process deviation. Furthermore, a constant on-time (COT)-based hysteretic burst mode controller with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) technique is developed to ensure high power efficiency for a wide input voltage range. After startup, the input voltage can be set as low as 30 mV. The whole system is designed and fabricated in SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS process, the end-to-end power efficiency of this converter can reach 49% at 350 mV input voltage and 65% at 750 mV input voltage.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (04) ◽  
pp. 301-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Hossein Zarifi ◽  
Javad Frounchi ◽  
Mohammad A. Tinati ◽  
Shahin Farshchi ◽  
Jack W. Judy

Monitoring the electrical activities of a large number of neurons in vertebrates' central nervous system in vivo through hundreds of parallel channels without interferring in their natural functions is a neuroscientist's interest. Value of this information in both scientific and clinical contexts, especially in expansion of brain–computer interfaces, is extremely significant. Therefore, low-noise amplifiers are needed with filtering capability on the front end to amplify the desired signals and eliminate direct current baseline shifts. Hence, size and power consumption need to be minimized to reduce trauma and heat dissipation, which can result in tissue damage for human applications and the system needs to be implantable and wireless. The practical solution for developing such systems is system-on-a-chip, based on ultra-low-power mixed-mode and wideband RFIC designs. They, however, impose a number of challenges that may require nontraditional solutions. In this paper, we present a fully differential low-power low-noise preamplifier suitable for recording biological signals, from a few mHz up to 10 kHz. This amplifier has a bandpass filter that is tunable between 10 mHz and 10 kHz, and has been designed and simulated in a standard 90-nm CMOS process. The circuit consumes 10 μW from a 1.2 V supply and provides a gain of 40 dB and an output swing of ±0.5 V with a total harmonic distortion of less than 0.5%. The total input-referred noise level is 4.6 μV integrating the noise over 0.01 Hz to 10 kHz.


In this paper we propose a power efficient technique called Sleepy- Gate Diffusion Input (S-GDI) that can be used for efficient digital design at nano scale foundries. For area and power comparison, ten prior techniques are taken in to consideration and applied on XOR gate, 1-bit adder, 1-bit comparator and 4- bit up-down counter. All techniques are parametrically analyzed on 65nm technology. The proposed S-GDI technique has been observed power efficient as compared to Complementary CMOS technique (CCT), Complementary Pass Transistor Logic (CPTL), DCMOS (Differential CMOS), Differential Cascode Voltage Switch with Pass Gate Logic (DCVSPG), Energy Economized Pass Transistor Logic (EEPL), Lean Integration with Pass Transistors (LEAP), Push-Pull Pass Transistor Logic (PPL), Pass Transistor Logic (PTL), CMOS with Transmission Gate (TG) and Gate diffusion Input (GDI). As compared to GDI technique S-GDI is showing 96.20%, 93.65%, 97.88% and 98.22% power efficiency for XOR, 1-bit adder, 1-bit comparator and 4-bit up-down counter respectively. S-GDI is showing area efficiency of 17.16% and 28.1% for XOR, 41.26% and 53.89% for 1-bit adder, 7.6% and 21.76% for 1-bit comparator and 6.7% and 28% for up-down counter over EEPL and DCMOS technique respectively. Although other techniques except EEPL and DCMOS techniques are area efficient as compared to proposed technique but this is on the expense of higher total power dissipation. So, PDP (power delay products) of all considered techniques are also calculated on 65nm technology for both SUM and CARRY outputs of 1-bit adder. In both cases power delay product for S-GDI technique is very less as compared to all other considered technique. Due to efficiency of S-GDI in terms of considered parameters, this technique can be efficiently used for low power applications


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (16) ◽  
pp. 2050261
Author(s):  
Sumalya Ghosh ◽  
Bishnu Prasad De ◽  
K. B. Maji ◽  
R. Kar ◽  
D. Mandal ◽  
...  

In this paper, an evolutionary computation-based optimal design of low power, high gain inductive source degenerated CMOS cascode low noise amplifier (LNA) circuit is presented for 2.4[Formula: see text]GHz frequency. The main challenge for the design of radio frequency (RF) LNAs at nanometer range is the thermal noise generated in the short-channel MOSFETs. The short-channel effects (SCEs), such as velocity saturation and channel-length modulation, are considered for the design of CMOS LNA. The evolutionary algorithm taken for this work is Moth-Flame Optimization (MFO) algorithm. MFO is utilized for the optimization of noise figure (NF) while satisfying all the other design performance parameters like gain, matching parameters at input/output, power dissipation, linearity, stability. Optimal values of the sizes of the transistors and other design parameters in designing the LNA circuit are also obtained from the MFO algorithm. The CMOS LNA circuit is designed by using MFO-based optimal design parameters in CADENCE software with a standard 0.18[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]m CMOS process. The designed LNA shows a gain of 15.28[Formula: see text]dB, NF of 0.376[Formula: see text]dB, the power dissipation of 936[Formula: see text][Formula: see text]W and IIP3 of [Formula: see text][Formula: see text]dBm at 2.4[Formula: see text]GHz. The designed LNA achieves better trade-off which results in an FOM of 42.3[Formula: see text]mW[Formula: see text] and may be useful in the receiver module of IEEE 802.15.4 for WLAN applications.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 7982
Author(s):  
Gyuri Choi ◽  
Hyunwoo Heo ◽  
Donggeun You ◽  
Hyungseup Kim ◽  
Kyeongsik Nam ◽  
...  

In this paper, a low-power and low-noise readout circuit for resistive-bridge microsensors is presented. The chopper-stabilized, recycling folded cascode current-feedback instrumentation amplifier (IA) is proposed to achieve the low-power, low-noise, and high-input impedance. The chopper-stabilized, recycling folded cascode topology (with a Monticelli-style, class-AB output stage) can enhance the overall noise characteristic, gain, and slew rate. The readout circuit consists of a chopper-stabilized, recycling folded cascode IA, low-pass filter (LPF), ADC driving buffer, and 12-bit successive-approximation-register (SAR) analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The prototype readout circuit is implemented in a standard 0.18 µm CMOS process, with an active area of 12.5 mm2. The measured input-referred noise at 1 Hz is 86.6 nV/√Hz and the noise efficiency factor (NEF) is 4.94, respectively. The total current consumption is 2.23 μA, with a 1.8 V power supply.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 889
Author(s):  
Xiaoying Deng ◽  
Peiqi Tan

An ultra-low-power K-band LC-VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator) with a wide tuning range is proposed in this paper. Based on the current-reuse topology, a dynamic back-gate-biasing technique is utilized to reduce power consumption and increase tuning range. With this technique, small dimension cross-coupled pairs are allowed, reducing parasitic capacitors and power consumption. Implemented in SMIC 55 nm 1P7M CMOS process, the proposed VCO achieves a frequency tuning range of 19.1% from 22.2 GHz to 26.9 GHz, consuming only 1.9 mW–2.1 mW from 1.2 V supply and occupying a core area of 0.043 mm2. The phase noise ranges from −107.1 dBC/HZ to −101.9 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset over the whole tuning range, while the total harmonic distortion (THD) and output power achieve −40.6 dB and −2.9 dBm, respectively.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document