A Multi-Sensor and Parallel Processing SoC for Miniaturized Medical Instrumentation

We report VivoSoC, a system-on-chip realized in 130-nm CMOS for miniaturized medical instrumentation as used in mobile health devices or implantable telemetry systems for animal experiments. It features six neural stimulation channels and acquisition circuits for 9× electrode-based recordings, 4-channel/32-LED photoplethysmography (PPG), bioimpedance, and temperature. A 34-μW/MHz quad-core processing unit with sophisticated data, power, and clock management techniques enables on-chip feature extraction, which can dramatically reduce transmission or storage data rates in a system-crucial for overall power consumption and exemplarily demonstrated on preliminary work on implantable PPG-based vital signs monitoring.