A near-threshold ASK demodulator for ultra-low-power implantable biomedical microsystems

This paper presents a CMOS 130nm demodulator to support the multi-megabit data rate for wireless biotelemetry communication. A modulation scheme based on amplitude-shift-keying (ASK) is employed to minimize the complexity of the implant circuit and reduce power transmission requirements. The proposed demodulator operates at near-threshold region for ultra-low-power consumption and dissipates only 105μW, with a 0.5V supply (e.g. 726μW at 1.5V) at a data rate of 2 Mb/s and a carrier frequency of 10MHz.