An 8-Channel Ambulatory EEG Recording IC With In-Channel Fully-Analog Real-Time Motion Artifact Extraction and Removal.

Abstract

Wereport the design, implementation, and experimental characterization of an 8-channel EEG recording IC (0.13 μm CMOS, 12 mm 2 total area) with a channel architecture that conducts both the extraction and removal of motion artifacts on-chip and in-channel. The proposed dual-path feed-forward method for artifact extraction and removal is implemented in the analog domain, hence is needless of a DSP unit for artifact estimation, and its associated high-DR ADCs and DACs employed by the state of the art for artifact replica generation. Additionally, the presented architecture improves system's scalability as it enables channels' stand-alone operation, and yields the lowest reported channel power consumption among works featuring motion artifact detection/removal. Following an experimental study on electrode-skin interface electrical characteristics for dry electrodes in the absence and presence of motions, the article presents the channel architecture, its detailed signal transfer function analysis, circuit-level implementation, and experimental characterization results. Our measurement results show an amplification voltage gain of 48.3 dB, a bandwidth of 300 Hz, rail-to-rail input DC offset tolerance, and 41.5 dB artifact suppression, while consuming 55 μW per channel. The system's efficacy in EEG motion artifact suppression is validated experimentally, and system- and circuit-level features and performance metrics of the presented design are compared with the state of the art.