A 126-/spl mu/W cochlear chip for a totally implantable system

A single-chip speech processor/stimulator is presented for use in a totally implanted cochlear prosthesis system. It implements a continuous interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy. By combining the speech processor and the stimulator into one mixed-signal chip, both size and power are reduced sufficiently, so as to make a totally implanted system feasible. First silicon has been validated and typically operates at 126 /spl mu/W (excluding cochlear stimulation currents).

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