Search for: All records

Neural signal recording and optical stimulation using implantable devices have become a ubiquitous method to treat brain disorders, yet there lie some shortcomings, such as size, weight, and functionalities of the implants. This work presents a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) component-based miniaturized wireless optogenetic headstage with simultaneous optical stimulation and electrophysiological recording for freely moving rats. The system includes a battery-based neural stimulator consisting of a low-dropout (LDO) regulator, an oscillator, and a μ LED. The electrophysiological signal recording system includes an intracortical neural probe implemented on a shape memory polymer (SMP) substrate, an array of neural amplifiers with an integrated analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a transceiver IC, and a ceramic antenna. A digital sub-1-GHz transceiver integrated with a low-power microcontroller (MCU) is used to transmit the acquired neural data to a remote receiver unit, followed by offline spike detection and sorting in LabVIEW. The front-end recording amplifiers provide a gain of 45.7 dB with the input-referred noise of 2.4μVrms . The integrated multiplexer (MUX) with the ADC allows sampling of the amplified voltage at a configurable sampling rate of 160–480 kSamples/s. The total power consumption of the stimulation and the recording system is 23 mW. The dimension of the headstage device is 13.5×21.3 mm, weighing 4 g without the battery. The system is experimentally validated in an in vivo setting by placing the headstage on the head of a male rat and recording the neural signals from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain. This integrative neural signal recording and spike sorting approach would be useful for the development of a closed-loop neuromodulation system. 

Miniaturization of the neuromodulation system is important for non-invasive or sub-invasive optogenetic application. This work presents an optimized wireless power transfer (WPT) system integrated with an on-chip rectification circuitry and an off-chip stimulation circuitry for optogenetic stimulation of freely moving rodents. The proposed WPT system is built using parallel transmitter (TX) coils on printed circuit board (PCB) and wire-wound based receiver (RX) coil followed by a seven-stage voltage doubler and a low dropout regulator (LDO) circuit designed in 180 nm standard Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) process. A pulse stimulation is used to stimulate the neurons which is generated using a commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) components based oscillator circuit. The intensity of the stimulation is controlled by using a COTS based LED driver circuit which controls the current through the μ LED. The total dimension of the RX coil is 8 mm × 3.4 mm. The maximum power transfer efficiency (PTE) of the proposed WPT system is ∼ 35% and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the rectifier is 52%. The proposed system with reconfigurable stimulation frequency is suitable for exciting different brain areas for long-term health monitoring. 

This work presents a miniaturized wireless power transfer (WPT) system integrated with a neuromodulation headstage for duty-cycled optical stimulation of freely moving rodents. The proposed WPT system is built using the commercially available off-the-shelf components (COTS) for the optogenetic neuromodulation system consisting of a bridge rectifier, a DC-DC converter, an oscillator circuit, an LED driver, and a μLED. The total power consumption of the stimulation system is 14 mW which is provided using the WPT method. The WPT system includes a novel transmitter (TX) coil implemented on a printed circuit board (PCB), and a solenoid receiver (RX) coil wrapped around a customized 3-D printed headstage. The proposed TX coil is designed in such a way that the magnetic field all across the TX coil is sufficient to provide the required power to the optical stimulation system that is worn as a headstage by the freely moving rat. The headstage device's dimension is 18.75 mm × 21.95 mm, weighing 4.75 g. The ratio of the weight of the headstage and rat is 4.75:300. The proposed system is able to achieve a maximum overall efficiency of ∼63% at 5 cm separation between the TX and RX coils, where the maximum power transfer efficiency (PTE) of the WPT system is ∼88% and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the rectifier is 71.6%. The proposed system with reconfigurable stimulation frequency is suitable for exciting different brain areas for long-term health monitoring. 

Abstract This paper presents a motion-sensing device with the capability of harvesting energy from low-frequency motion activities. Based on the high surface area reverse electrowetting-on-dielectric (REWOD) energy harvesting technique, mechanical modulation of the liquid generates an AC signal, which is modeled analytically and implemented in Matlab and COMSOL. A constant DC voltage is produced by using a rectifier and a DC–DC converter to power up the motion-sensing read-out circuit. A charge amplifier converts the generated charge into a proportional output voltage, which is transmitted wirelessly to a remote receiver. The harvested DC voltage after the rectifier and DC–DC converter is found to be 3.3 V, having a measured power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the rectifier as high as 40.26% at 5 Hz frequency. The energy harvester demonstrates a linear relationship between the frequency of motion and the generated output power, making it highly suitable as a self-powered wearable motion sensor. 

One of the design challenges of the implantable medical devices (IMD) is the power requirement that needs to be minimum to avoid frequent battery-replacement and surgeries. This paper presents a duty-cycled IR-UWB transmitter designed using standard 180 nm CMOS process that achieves an energy efficiency (energy-per-pulse) of 11.5 pJ/pulse at 100 Mbps data rate. Working in the frequency range of 4 - 6 GHz, the transmitter achieves a peak power spectral density (PSD) of -42.1 dBm/MHz with 950 MHz bandwidth which makes it highly suitable for high data rate biotelemetry applications. The bandwidth of the proposed transmitter system can also be varied from 500 MHz-950 MHz using control voltage of the impulse generator (IG). The wide frequency range and bandwidth range of the proposed transmitter also makes it highly suitable for distributed brain implant applications covering both lower and upper UWB frequency bands. 

This paper presents a motion-sensing device with the capability of harvesting energy from low-frequency motion activities that can be utilized for long-term human health monitoring. The energy harvester used in the proposed motion sensor is based on the mechanical modulation of liquid on an insulated electrode, which utilizes a technique referred to as reverse electrowetting-on-dielectric (REWOD). The generated AC signal from the REWOD is rectified to a DC voltage using a Schottky diode-based rectifier and boosted subsequently with the help of a linear charge-pump circuit and a low-dropout regulator (LDO). The constant DC voltage from the LDO (1.8 V) powers the motion-sensing read-out circuitry, which converts the generated charge into a proportional output voltage using a charge amplifier. After amplification of the motion data, a 5-bit SAR-ADC (successive-approximation register ADC) digitizes the signal to be transmitted to a remote receiver. Both the CMOS energy harvester circuit including the rectifier, the charge-pump circuit, the LDO, and the read-out circuit including the charge amplifier, and the ADC is designed in the standard 180 nm CMOS technology. The amplified amplitude goes up to 1.76 V at 10 Hz motion frequency, following linearity with respect to the frequency. The generated DC voltage from the REWOD after the rectifier and the charge-pump is found to be 2.4 V, having the voltage conversion ratio (VCR) as 32.65% at 10 Hz of motion frequency. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of the rectifier is simulated as high as 68.57% at 10 Hz. The LDO provides the power supply voltage of 1.8 V to the read-out circuit. The energy harvester demonstrates a linear relationship between the frequency of motion and the generated output power, making it suitable as a self-powered wearable motion sensor. 

Monitoring human health in real-time using wearable and implantable electronics (WIE) has become one of the most promising and rapidly growing technologies in the healthcare industry. In general, these electronics are powered by batteries that require periodic replacement and maintenance over their lifetime. To prolong the operation of these electronics, they should have zero post-installation maintenance. On this front, various energy harvesting technologies to generate electrical energy from ambient energy sources have been researched. Many energy harvesters currently available are limited by their power output and energy densities. With the miniaturization of wearable and implantable electronics, the size of the harvesters must be miniaturized accordingly in order to increase the energy density of the harvesters. Additionally, many of the energy harvesters also suffer from limited operational parameters such as resonance frequency and variable input signals. In this work, low frequency motion energy harvesting based on reverse electrowetting-ondielectric (REWOD) is examined using perforated high surface area electrodes with 38 µm pore diameters. Total available surface area per planar area was 8.36 cm2 showing a significant surface area enhancement from planar to porous electrodes and proportional increase in AC voltage density from our previous work. In REWOD energy harvesting, high surface area electrodes significantly increase the capacitance and hence the power density. An AC peak-to-peak voltage generation from the electrode in the range from 1.57-3.32 V for the given frequency range of 1-5 Hz with 0.5 Hz step is demonstrated. In addition, the unconditioned power generated from the harvester is converted to a DC power using a commercial off-theshelf Schottky diode-based voltage multiplier and low dropout regulator (LDO) such that the sensors that use this technology could be fully self-powered. The produced charge is then converted to a proportional voltage by using a commercial charge amplifier to record the features of the motion activities. A transceiver radio is also used to transmit the digitized data from the amplifier and the built-in analog-to-digital converter (ADC) in the micro-controller. This paper proposes the energy harvester acting as a self-powered motion sensor for different physical activities for wearable and wireless healthcare devices.