SPACEMan: Wireless SoC for Concurrent Potentiometry and Amperometry

This work describes the implementation of SPACEMan, a wireless electrochemical system with concurrent potentiometric and amperometric sensing that can be utilised for saliva, sweat or point of care diagnostics. This system is designed with the vision of simpler interfaces for biofluid analysis. With a complete system-on-chip including electrochemical sensing, power management and data transmission, conventional interfaces like wirebonds will no longer be required in post-processing steps. The proposed architecture consists of a sensor front-end with four electrodes for concurrent amperometric and potentiometric sensing. This front-end outputs square wave signals mixed together with varying frequencies dependent on the sensed input, with the output type switchable with a state machine. A power management system consisting of a low dropout regulator (LDO) band gap reference (BGR), and a rectifier bridge is utilised for supplying power from an inductive link at 433MHz. Sensor data is transmitted wirelessly to a base station using LSK (Load-Shift Keying). The sensor front-end consumes 18μW, which the power management system more than adequately provides. The core area of the electronics without the coil is a conservative size of 0.41mm
²
.