Integrated Electronic Circuits and Systems for Unobtrusive Biomedical Sensing

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Circuit and Signal Processing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 10531

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Engineering, Kiel University, D-24143 Kiel, Germany
Interests: analog circuits and systems; integrated circuits; biomedical sensing; low-noise and low-power design

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Engineering, Kiel University, D-24143 Kiel, Germany
Interests: sensor system electronics; analog and mixed-signal integrated circuit design; biomedical signal acquisition; low-noise and low-power design
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Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

Advances in CMOS technology, communication, and low power circuit design have spurred the development of wearable biomedical devices and electrically active implants, leading to miniaturized and highly integrated systems for continuous monitoring of physiological parameters. In the health and fitness market, devices monitor the rehabilitation progress, quantify personal body condition, or map activity. In such applications, it is essential that systems are ultra-low-power, miniaturized, and unobtrusive.

It is the goal of this Special Issue to report the latest developments of circuits and systems which drive novel sensing concepts and lead to ever more seamless integration of the electronic system with the body. Examples include capacitive non-contact sensing of biopotentials, devices or interface circuits for wearable biomagnetic sensors, and highly integrated neural interfaces. Essential supporting circuits are also within the scope of this SI, e.g., CMOS power harvesting systems demonstrated with a sensing device, edge processing of bioelectric signals, or dedicated low-power input amplifiers.

Prof. Dr. Robert Rieger
Prof. Dr. Andreas Bahr
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • CMOS sensor interfaces
  • integrated circuits
  • biomedical sensing
  • wearable systems
  • electrically active implants

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 9298 KiB  
Article
A Pipeline-TDC-Based CMOS Temperature Sensor with a 48 fJ·K2 Resolution FoM
by Zhikuang Cai, Ze Wang, Wenjing Zhang, Xin Wang and Zixuan Wang
Electronics 2021, 10(13), 1542; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10131542 - 25 Jun 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1974
Abstract
An energy-efficient temperature sensor is important for temperature monitoring in Biomedical Internet-of-things (BIoT) applications. This article presents a time-domain temperature sensor with a pipeline time-to-digital converter (TDC). A programmable-gain time amplifier (PGTA) with high linearity and wide linear range is proposed to improve [...] Read more.
An energy-efficient temperature sensor is important for temperature monitoring in Biomedical Internet-of-things (BIoT) applications. This article presents a time-domain temperature sensor with a pipeline time-to-digital converter (TDC). A programmable-gain time amplifier (PGTA) with high linearity and wide linear range is proposed to improve the resolution of the sensor and to reduce the chip area. The conversion time of the sensor is reduced by the fast TDC that only needs ~26 ns/conversion, which means the sensor is suitable for BIoT applications that commonly use duty cycling mode. Fabricated in a 40 nm standard CMOS technology, the sensor consumes 7.6 μA at a 0.6 V supply and achieves a resolution of 90 mK and a sensitivity of 0.62%/°C in a 1.3 μs conversion time. This translates into a resolution figure-of-merit of 48 fJ·K2. The sensor achieves an inaccuracy of 0.39 °C from −20 °C to 80 °C after two-point calibration. Duty cycling the sensor results in an even lower average power: ~18.6 nW at 10 conversions/s. Full article
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13 pages, 4936 KiB  
Article
A 40-nm CMOS Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting IC for Wearable Biomedical Applications
by Chua-Chin Wang, Lean Karlo S. Tolentino, Pin-Chuan Chen, John Richard E. Hizon, Chung-Kun Yen, Cheng-Tang Pan and Ya-Hsin Hsueh
Electronics 2021, 10(6), 649; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10060649 - 11 Mar 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3889
Abstract
This investigation presents an energy harvesting IC (integrated circuit) for piezoelectric materials as a substitute for battery of a wearable biomedical device. It employs a voltage multiplier as first stage which uses water bucket fountain approach to boost the very low voltage generated [...] Read more.
This investigation presents an energy harvesting IC (integrated circuit) for piezoelectric materials as a substitute for battery of a wearable biomedical device. It employs a voltage multiplier as first stage which uses water bucket fountain approach to boost the very low voltage generated by the piezoelectric. The boosted voltage was further improved by the boost DC/DC converter which follows a predefined timing control directed by the digital logic for the said converter to be operated efficiently. TSMC 40-nm CMOS process was used for implementation and fabrication of the energy harvesting IC. The chip’s core has an area of 0.013 mm2. With an output of 1 V which is enough to supply the wearable biomedical devices, it exhibited the highest pump gain and accommodated the lowest piezoelectric generated voltage among recent related works. Full article
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11 pages, 3459 KiB  
Article
A Radio Frequency Magnetoelectric Antenna Prototyping Platform for Neural Activity Monitoring Devices with Sensing and Energy Harvesting Capabilities
by Diptashree Das, Mehdi Nasrollahpour, Ziyue Xu, Mohsen Zaeimbashi, Isabel Martos-Repath, Ankit Mittal, Adam Khalifa, Sydney S. Cash, Aatmesh Shrivastava, Nian X. Sun and Marvin Onabajo
Electronics 2020, 9(12), 2123; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics9122123 - 11 Dec 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3852
Abstract
This article describes the development of a radio frequency (RF) platform for electromagnetically modulated signals that makes use of a software-defined radio (SDR) to receive information from a novel magnetoelectric (ME) antenna capable of sensing low-frequency magnetic fields with ultra-low magnitudes. The platform [...] Read more.
This article describes the development of a radio frequency (RF) platform for electromagnetically modulated signals that makes use of a software-defined radio (SDR) to receive information from a novel magnetoelectric (ME) antenna capable of sensing low-frequency magnetic fields with ultra-low magnitudes. The platform is employed as part of research and development to utilize miniaturized ME antennas and integrated circuits for neural recording with wireless implantable devices. To prototype the reception of electromagnetically modulated signals from a sensor, a versatile Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) and the GNU Radio toolkit are utilized to enable real-time signal processing under varying operating conditions. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how a radio frequency signal transmitted from the SDR can be captured by the ME antenna for wireless energy harvesting. Full article
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