A 28-μW EEG readout front-end utilizing a current-mode instrumentation amplifier and a source-follower-based LPF

A novel low-power EEG readout front-end featuring a current-mode instrumentation amplifier (CMIA) followed by a 4
^th
-order gain-compensated source-follower-based lowpass filter (LPF) is proposed. The CMIA is of current-conveyor topology and is chopper-stabilized to improve the common-mode noise rejection and suppress the dc-offset and 1/f noise. The typical gain-loss problem of source-follower-based LPF is alleviated by adopting a gain-compensation technique. Optimized in 0.35-μm CMOS, the achieved CMRR is >100 dB from 0.01 to 16 Hz, and >90 dB up to 40 Hz. With the chopper stabilization, the noise voltage density is 248 nV√Hz at 0.01 Hz and 197 nV√Hz at 100 Hz. The power consumption is 28 μW at 3 V.