A low-power low-noise amplifier with high CMRR for wearable healthcare applications

Abstract

Low-noise and low-power operation are important parameters of amplifier intended for wearable healthcare applications. However, along with these parameters the amplifier must be able to deliver high Common Mode Rejection Ratio (CMRR) for mitigating the effect of 50/60 Hz interference. This paper reports capacitively coupled-capacitive feedback amplifier based on Self Cascode Current Mirror-II (SCCM-II) Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA). The obtained results for proposed SCCM-II OTA based amplifier shows gain of 39.79 dB, input referred noise of 2.64 μVrms, bandwidth of 0.794-343.4 Hz, area consumption of 0.154 μm2, power consumption of 2.54 μW with ±0.9 V supply. The noise efficiency factor and CMRR values for proposed amplifier are 3.87 and 122.1 dB, respectively. In-depth theoretical interpretations and mathematical modeling of amplifier are validated in 0.18μm standard CMOS process using BSIM3V3 MOS device models. The Gaussian distribution plots of proposed amplifier for 200 Monte-Carlo iterations infer mean values for gain and CMRR are 39.79 dB and 112.96 dB which are very close to their nominal values. The proposed amplifier has been compared with conventional approach as well as with literature and improvement in results is observed in terms of input referred noise, power and CMMR. These advantages of the proposed amplifier make it suitable for non-invasive wearable healthcare applications.