A wireless front-end for implantable cardiac micro-stimulator

Inductive coupling is commonly used for wireless power and data transfer in biomedical telemetry systems. The capability of telemetry module to communicate with the inside of the body makes it possible to transmit the control signal into the implant electronic devices and process the detected inner biophysical signal externally by back-telemetry. On the other hand, the telemetry module inside is capable of converting the radio-frequency (RF) energy delivered through the body tissue into DC as the supply for the implanted device. In this paper, a novel wireless power and data receiver is presented to receive RF signal and generates 1-V DC supply voltage for the sequent device. The overall circuits with core area of 0.07 mm² have been implemented in a TSMC 0.35μm 2P4M standard CMOS process technology. Measured result shows that the low-power on-chip LDO regulator provides a stable 1-V DC supply voltage and the digital data as well as the 256-kHz clock are obtained precisely.