A 0.7-V 600-nW 87-dB SNDR DT-ΔΣ modulator with partly body-driven and switched op-amps for biopotential signal acquisition

A 0.7 V third-order DT ΔΣ modulator is presented in this paper for measurement of biopotential signals in portable medical applications. Switched-opamp technique has been adopted in this design to eliminate the critical switches, which leads to low-voltage and low-power consumption. The modulator employs new partially body-driven gain-enhanced amplifiers for low-voltage operation in order to compensate the dc gain degradation. Switched-opamp approach is embedded in amplifiers and CMFB circuits to reduce the power consumption. The major building blocks, such as the proposed Class AB gain-enhanced amplifiers and the low-voltage comparator, use body-biased p-MOS to reduce the threshold voltage, thus providing more voltage headroom in the low voltage environment. Noise analysis, as a critical step in the design of a high resolution ADC, is also provided. Designed in a 65nm CMOS technology, the modulator achieves 87 dB peak SNDR over a 500 Hz signal bandwidth, while it consumes 600- nW from a 0.7 V supply.