The method involves calculating flicker and thermal noise over a desired bandwidth and determining how these relate to the size of input transistors and bias current. It helps designers minimize total noise and power usage, making it ideal for circuits in medical applications where low-noise and high-efficiency performance is essential. This includes devices that amplify signals from the brain or muscles.
Figure 1. Overview of neural amplifier
Biomedical signals like neural activity are extremely weak and easily affected by noise. Existing circuit designs do not optimize for noise versus power trade-off effectively, especially in multi-channel applications like brain signal monitoring.
- Noise Minimization Strategy: The proposed design method introduces a systematic approach to minimize total integrated noise by mathematically accounting for both flicker and thermal noise across the target bandwidth.
- Power-Noise Optimization: The method allows circuit designers to optimize transistor sizes and bias current values, thereby achieving an efficient balance between low power consumption and minimal noise generation.
- Battery-Friendly Biomedical Integration: This technology is well-suited for implementation in battery-powered biomedical circuits where ultra-low power and high sensitivity are required, such as in wearable or portable diagnostic tools.
- Flexible PMOS/NMOS Design Support: The approach supports the use of both PMOS and NMOS input transistors and offers a quantitative technique to determine the optimal area distribution between them based on noise coefficients.
- Analog Front-End Applicability: The method is particularly effective for designing analog front-end circuits in neural amplifiers, enabling low-noise acquisition of weak biomedical signals in multi-channel recording systems.
The prototype is a low-power biomedical signal conditioning circuit optimized for processing weak neural signals. It uses a two-stage Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) with complementary input transistors (PMOS and NMOS) to enhance transconductance while minimizing thermal and flicker noise. A tunable pseudo-resistor sets low-frequency cutoffs, and a feedback topology ensures stable performance. The circuit is optimized through a method that relates noise characteristics to transistor area and bias current, making it suitable for compact, battery-operated biomedical devices.
A complete design methodology and simulation-validated circuit for a biomedical signal conditioning system has been developed. It enables optimized trade-offs between noise, power, and area, particularly for low-power neural amplifier applications, using Monte Carlo simulations and noise-aware transistor sizing.
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This technology has the potential to significantly enhance healthcare delivery by enabling the development of affordable, portable, and accurate diagnostic devices. Since it is optimized for low-power and low-noise performance, it is ideally suited for use in neural signal monitoring systems, which are critical in diagnosing and managing neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and epilepsy.
- Neural recording systems
- Biomedical instrumentation
- Analog IC design for healthcare
- Implantable and wearable medical devices
- Medical electronics & device manufacturing
Geography of IP
Type of IP
4236/MUM/2015
408593