A bandwidth-tunable bioamplifier with voltage-controlled symmetric pseudo-resistors

This paper describes a bioamplifier that employs a voltage-controlled-pseudo-resistor to achieve tunable bandwidth and wide operating voltage range for biomedical applications. The versatile pseudo-resistor employed provides ultra-high resistance for ac coupling to cancel the dc offset from electrode-tissue interface. The voltage-controlled-pseudo-resistor consists of serial-connected PMOS transistors working at the subthreshold region and an auto-tuning circuit that makes sure the constant (time-invariant) control-voltage of the pseudo-resistor. This bandwidth-tunable bioamplifier is designed in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS process, achieving a gain of 40.2 dB with 10.35-μW power consumption. The designed chip was also used to develop the proof-of-concept prototype. An operation bandwidth of 9.5 kHz, input-referred noise of 5.2 μV_rms from 6.3 Hz to 9.5 kHz and 5.54 μV_rms from 250 Hz to 9.5 kHz, and a tunable cutoff-frequency from 6.3-600 Hz were demonstrated to prove our design.