A Miniaturized, Power-Efficent Stimulator Output Stage Based on the Bridge Rectifier Circuit

Author

Liu, Xiao ; Demosthenous, Andreas ; Donaldson, Nick

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Electr. Eng., Univ. Coll. London

fYear

2006

fDate

4-7 Dec. 2006

Firstpage

498

Lastpage

501

Abstract

Nerves can be artificially stimulated in people paralyzed after spinal cord injury to restore muscle function. The miniaturization of implantable stimulators is currently limited by the size of the large off-chip blocking capacitors that are used to ensure that no direct current flows between the electrodes in the event of a semiconductor failure. This paper proposes a new stimulator output stage circuit utilizing the principle of high-frequency current switching which allows the blocking capacitors to be integrated on-chip. The new design is based on the bridge rectifier circuit and achieves an increase of about 50% in power efficiency over a previous circuit. The approach has been verified by SPICE simulations in a 1mum SOI-CMOS technology

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; bridge circuits; prosthetics; rectifiers; silicon-on-insulator; 1 micron; CMOS technology; artificial stimulation; blocking capacitors; bridge rectifier circuit; current switching; implantable stimulators; silicon-on-insulator; spinal cord injury; Bridge circuits; Circuit simulation; Electrodes; Muscles; Power semiconductor switches; Rectifiers; SPICE; Spinal cord injury; Switched capacitor circuits; Switching circuits;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Circuits and Systems, 2006. APCCAS 2006. IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on

Conference_Location

Singapore

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0387-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/APCCAS.2006.342517

Filename

4145440