A New Configuration of Multipolar Cuff Electrode and Dedicated IC for Afferent Signal Recording

Sensory information coming from natural sensors and being propagated on afferent nerve fibers could be used as feedback for a more efficient closed-loop control of a functional electrical stimulation system. In order to extract and separate these signals according to their nerve fascicule origins, we propose a new architecture of a multipolar cuff electrode and an optimized integrated acquisition circuit. Concerning the electrode, we propose a specific configuration using a large number of poles in order to both reject parasitic signals, such as electromyogram and provide a maximum of recording channels in order to help the signal localization inside the nerve. Moreover, specific low-level analog signal processing was designed to extract the expected low-amplitude signal from its noisy environment. This signal processing is implemented in an ASIC that has to be implanted close to the electrode to achieve the best signal-to-noise ratio