Bio-Patch Design and Implementation Based on a Low-Power System-on-Chip and Paper-Based Inkjet Printing Technology

This paper presents the prototype implementation of a Bio-Patch using fully integrated low-power system-on-chip (SoC) sensor and paper-based inkjet printing technology. The SoC sensor is featured with programmable gain and bandwidth to accommodate a variety of biosignals. It is fabricated in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS technology, with a total power consumption of 20 μW from a 1.2 V supply. Both the electrodes and interconnections are implemented by printing conductive nanoparticle inks on a flexible photo paper substrate using inkjet printing technology. A Bio-Patch prototype is developed by integrating the SoC sensor, a soft battery, printed electrodes, and interconnections on a photo paper substrate. The Bio-Patch can work alone or operate along with other patches to establish a wired network for synchronous multiple-channel biosignals recording. The measurement results show that electrocardiogram and electromyogram are successfully measured in in vivo tests using the implemented Bio-Patch prototype.