Micropower circuits for bidirectional wireless telemetry in neural recording applications

State-of-the art neural recording systems require electronics allowing for transcutaneous, bidirectional data transfer. As these circuits will be implanted near the brain, they must be small and low power. We have developed micropower integrated circuits for recovering clock and data signals over a transcutaneous power link. The data recovery circuit produces a digital data signal from an ac power waveform that has been amplitude modulated. We have also developed an FM transmitter with the lowest power dissipation reported for biosignal telemetry. The FM transmitter consists of a low-noise biopotential amplifier and a voltage controlled oscillator used to transmit amplified neural signals at a frequency near 433 MHz. All circuits were fabricated in a standard 0.5-μm CMOS VLSI process. The resulting chip is powered through a wireless inductive link. The power consumption of the clock and data recovery circuits is measured to be 129 μW; the power consumption of the transmitter is measured to be 465 μW when using an external surface mount inductor. Using a parasitic antenna less than 2 mm long, a received power level was measured to be -59.73 dBm at a distance of one meter.