A bulk-driven, buffer-biased, gain-boosted amplifier for biomedical signal enhancement

Abstract The growing consciousness in health, biomedical research area is becoming most sought-after to develop or design medical devices by bringing biomedical researchers and clinicians to solve many health issues. Biomedical electronics is the endorsement and resolution of many techniques in engineering powered biology and medicine. The medical imaging accounts the design and development of electrophysiological monitoring devices to examine the whole human body for proper diagnosis. The biomedical signals are low amplitude, low frequency, are to be amplified in the range of millihertz to kilohertz while rejecting the dc offsets, created a tremendous demand amongst neuroscience researchers and clinicians. In this design capacitive feedback, neural signal recording amplifier is designed using folded cascode operational transconductance amplifier (OTA). The neural amplifier uses an AC coupled input signal to segregate the DC offset voltages generated at electrode-nerve interface due to chemical reaction and AC coupled input also represses the flicker noise. A large resistor, implemented using two series MOS devices as pseudo resistors, used in parallel to capacitive feedback to exploit device off-resistance for DC feedback normalization. This article presents a bulk-driven, buffer-biased, gain-boosted amplifier for biomedical signal is designed using 90 nm CMOS technology to capture signal activity. The bulk-driven folded cascode topology is used to design amplifier, which has reduced threshold voltage and supply voltage by consuming half the power of the conventional gate driven counter parts. The proposed and designed bulk-driven folded cascode operational transconductance amplifier (BD FC-OTA) achieved a gain of 81 dB, 39 nV/√ Hz is the recorded noise characteristics by consuming less power of 2.5 µW. The Wilson current mirror method has benefited the amplifier to enhance the gain and compensation capacitor with series resistor realized by MOSFET device is used in designing 1V powered buffer biased BD FC-OTA for biomedical applications. The layout of a proposed bulk-driven folded cascode amplifier is designed using Cadence Virtuoso has a dimensions of 17.255× 35.5μm.

[1]  Tripurari Sharan,et al.  Sub-threshold, cascode compensated, bulk-driven OTAs with enhanced gain and phase-margin , 2016, Microelectron. J..

[2]  P. Ruiz,et al.  Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Text Book of Psychiatry , 2005 .

[3]  Aimad El Mourabit,et al.  Wide-linear-range subthreshold OTA for low-power, low-Voltage, and low-frequency applications , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[4]  J. Francisco Duque-Carrillo,et al.  Single-pair bulk-driven CMOS input stage: A compact low-voltage analog cell for scaled technologies , 2010, Integr..

[5]  E. Rodriguez-Villegas,et al.  A 1.25-V micropower Gm-C filter based on FGMOS transistors operating in weak inversion , 2004, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[6]  Jong-In Song,et al.  A Chopper Stabilized Current-Feedback Instrumentation Amplifier for EEG Acquisition Applications , 2019, IEEE Access.

[7]  R.G. Carvajal,et al.  The flipped voltage follower: a useful cell for low-voltage low-power circuit design , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. Proceedings (Cat. No.02CH37353).

[8]  Saleha Bano,et al.  Power Efficient Fully Differential Bulk Driven OTA for Portable Biomedical Application , 2018 .

[9]  Hyouk-Kyu Cha,et al.  An Ultra Low-power Low-noise Neural Recording Analog Front-end IC for Implantable Devices , 2018 .

[10]  Samad Sheikhaei,et al.  A low-power low-noise CMOS bio-potential amplifier for multi-channel neural recording with active DC-rejection and current sharing , 2019, Microelectron. J..

[11]  Tripurari Sharan,et al.  Ultra-low-power bulk-driven fully differential subthreshold OTAs with partial positive feedback for Gm-C filters , 2018 .

[12]  Hariprasad Chandrakumar,et al.  A High Dynamic-Range Neural Recording Chopper Amplifier for Simultaneous Neural Recording and Stimulation , 2017, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[13]  Syed Kamrul Islam,et al.  Low-Voltage Bulk-Driven Operational Amplifier With Improved Transconductance , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[14]  Jeremy Holleman,et al.  An Ultralow-Power Low-Noise CMOS Biopotential Amplifier for Neural Recording , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[15]  Apisak Worapishet,et al.  Current-feedback source-degenerated CMOS transconductor with very high linearity , 2003 .

[16]  Farzan Rezaei,et al.  Transconductor Linearization Based On Adaptive Biasing of Source-Degenerative MOS Transistors , 2015, Circuits Syst. Signal Process..

[17]  Hyung Seok Kim,et al.  A low-power, low-noise neural recording amplifier for implantable biomedical devices , 2016, 2016 International SoC Design Conference (ISOCC).

[18]  Robson L. Moreno,et al.  An Ultra-Low-Voltage Ultra-Low-Power CMOS Miller OTA With Rail-to-Rail Input/Output Swing , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[19]  Gabriel A. Rincon-Mora,et al.  Designing 1-V op amps using standard digital CMOS technology , 1998 .

[20]  Hyung Seok Kim,et al.  A Low-Noise Biopotential CMOS Amplifier IC Using Low-Power Two-Stage OTA for Neural Recording Applications , 2018, J. Circuits Syst. Comput..

[21]  Chung-Chih Hung,et al.  A 1-V 50-MHz Pseudodifferential OTA With Compensation of the Mobility Reduction , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[22]  Zoran Nenadic,et al.  CMOS Ultralow Power Brain Signal Acquisition Front-Ends: Design and Human Testing , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

[25]  Sangwook Nam,et al.  A Transconductor and Tunable $G_{m}-C$ High-Pass Filter Linearization Technique Using Feedforward $G_{m3}$ Canceling , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[26]  Luis H. C. Ferreira,et al.  An ultra-low-power CMOS symmetrical OTA for low-frequency Gm-C applications , 2012 .

[27]  Sankaran Aniruddhan,et al.  A modified bias scheme for high-gain low-noise folded cascode OTAs , 2017, 2017 International Conference on Electron Devices and Solid-State Circuits (EDSSC).

[28]  Shing-Chow Chan,et al.  A 1.8 µW area-efficient bio-potential amplifier with 90 dB DC offset suppression , 2014, 2014 IEEE 57th International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS).

[29]  Juan A. Montiel-Nelson,et al.  A 1.2-V 730-nW 10-Hz-3.5-kHz programmable biopotential front-end , 2017, 2017 IEEE 60th International Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems (MWSCAS).

[30]  Mohammad Ali Tinati,et al.  A LOW-NOISE LOW-POWER FRONT-END AMPLIFIER FOR NEURAL-RECORDING APPLICATIONS , 2010 .

[31]  Shuenn-Yuh Lee,et al.  Systematic Design and Modeling of a OTA-C Filter for Portable ECG Detection , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

[32]  Nour-Eddine Bouguechal,et al.  Design of CMOS Two-stage Operational Amplifier for ECG Monitoring System Using 90nm Technology , 2014, BSBT 2014.

[33]  Tripurari Sharan,et al.  Fully Differential, Bulk-Driven, Class AB, Sub-Threshold OTA With Enhanced Slew Rates and Gain , 2017, J. Circuits Syst. Comput..

[34]  Slawomir Koziel,et al.  Multiple output differential OTA with linearizing bulk-driven active-error feedback loop for continuous-time filter applications , 2015, Int. J. Circuit Theory Appl..

[35]  George Raikos,et al.  0.8 V bulk-driven operational amplifier , 2010 .

[36]  Antonio Petraglia,et al.  Bulk-tuned Gm-C filter using current cancellation , 2015, Microelectron. J..

[37]  Dalibor Biolek,et al.  Utilizing the Bulk-driven technique in analog circuit design , 2010, 13th IEEE Symposium on Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and Systems.