Neural Signal Acquisition and Wireless Transmission System Design

A wireless neural signal acquisition system is presented for freely-running test. It consists of low-noise, high input impedance analog processing, radio frequency (RF) transmitter and receiver. Firstly, the weak neural signal is amplified by a variable gain pre-amplifier and then digitalized by a Sigma-delta ADC. Secondly, the digital data is transmitted and received with couple of RF circuits based on IEEE STD802.15 standard and on-off keying (OOK) modulation. Fabricated in SMIC 0.18μm CMOS process, the IC prototype occupies 2.88mm2 and consumes 40mW. It works functionally, which can be a wide solution for wireless neural signal processor.