An Analog Front-End Chip With Self-Calibrated Input Impedance for Monitoring of Biosignals via Dry Electrode-Skin Interfaces

Abstract

This paper demonstrates an input impedance boosting method that was developed for long-term monitoring of electroencephalography signals. An instrumentation amplifier was designed with a negative capacitance generation feedback (NCGFB) technique to cancel the adverse effects of input capacitances from electrode cables and printed circuit boards. The NCGFB boosts the measured impedance from below 40 MΩ to above 500 MQ at 50 Hz when the equivalent capacitance at the inputs is up to 150 pF. The prototype chip includes an automatic calibration system to adaptively enhance the input impedance through on-chip test signal generation, measurement, and the automatic digital control of the NCGFB. Consisting of an instrumentation amplifier, a low-pass notch filter, and a variable gain amplifier in 130-nm CMOS technology, the signal path has a combined gain range of 66-93 dB with a total power consumption of 42 μW. The front-end bandwidth covers 0.5-48 Hz, and its integrated input-referred noise over the bandwidth is 3.75 μV <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">rms</sub> . The measured third-order harmonic distortion component is at least 57 dB below the fundamental signal level. A common-mode rejection ratio of 77.6 dB and a power supply rejection ratio of 74 dB were measured at 10 Hz. When activated, the auxiliary test signal generation and calibration circuits consume a power of 542 μW.