Biomedical System-on-Chip Design with Integrated Body-Coupled Powering

Capacitive Body-Coupled Powering (BCP) has been demonstrated as an effective power delivery solution for wearable biomedical system-on-chips (SoC), thanks to its improved path loss compared to the RF-based transmission in the body area, and its insusceptibility to the body shadowing effect. Integrating BCP with biomedical SoCs could unlock potentials for a power-sustainable and long-lasting system design. In this paper, starting from the motivation for BCP, we will identify the challenges in the integration of BCP with other building blocks of the SoC (e.g., sensing front-end, transceiver). After reviewing and analyzing the existing techniques for BCP and a BCP-compatible SoC design, the design considerations and optimizations will be discussed.