A fully integrated power-efficient SoC with a wireless UWB transmitter for biomedical and chemical research

Abstract

This paper presents a fully integrated mixed-signal microsystem designed for biomedical and electrochemical research. Our primary design objective is low power operation that enables battery powered in- or ex-vivo experiments on untethered animals. The system runs from a primary or secondary battery that can be recharged via two inductively coupled 8㎜-diameter coils. The system includes a wireless ultra-wide band (UWB) transmitter with a pulse-repetition-frequency (PRF) up to 200 ㎒. The system is built on a 16-bit microprocessor with an optimized instruction set and 32 kB of on-chip SRAM. The digital core consumes 350 ㎼ at 10 ㎒ and is capable of running at frequencies up to 200 ㎒. The core microcontroller and UWB transmitter have been fabricated in a 65 ㎚ CMOS technology and been fully tested as stand-alone chips. The remaining blocks, including a sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter (ADC), two 10-bit digital-to-analog converters (DAC), and a sleep mode timer have been designed and extensively simulated and the SoC will be submitted for fabrication in October 2013. Measured and simulated results are presented.