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This article presents an implantable impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) wireless telemetry system for intracortical neural sensing interfaces. A 3-D hybrid impulse modulation that comprises phase shift keying (PSK), pulse position modulation (PPM), and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) is proposed to increase modulation order without significantly increasing the demodulation requirement, thus leading to a high data rate of 1.66 Gbps and an increased air-transmission range. Operating in a 6–9-GHz UWB band, the presented transmitter (TX) supports the proposed hybrid modulation with a high energy efficiency of 5.8 pJ/bit and modulation quality [error vector magnitude (EVM) < −21 dB]. A low-noise injection-locked ring oscillator (ILRO) supports 8-PSK with a phase error of 2.6°. A calibration-free delay generator realizes a 4-PPM with only $115~\mu \text{W}$ and avoids potential cross-modulation between PPM and PSK. A switch-cap power amplifier (PA) with asynchronous pulse-shaping performs 4-PAM with high energy efficiency and linearity. The TX is implemented in 28-nm CMOS technology, occupying a 0.155 mm2 core area. The wireless module including a printed monopole antenna has a module area of only 1.05 cm2. The TX consumes in total 9.7 mW when transmitting −41.3-dBm/MHz output power. The wireless telemetry module has been validated ex-vivo with a 15-mm multi-layer porcine tissue, and achieves a communication (air) distance up to 15 cm, leading to at least $16\times $ improvement in distance-moralized energy efficiency of 45 pJ/bit/m compared to a state-of-the-art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A digital-impulse galvanic coupling as a new high-speed trans-dural (from cortex to the skull) data transmission method has been presented in this article. The proposed wireless telemetry replaces the tethered wires connected in between implants on the cortex and above the skull, allowing the brain implant to be “free-floating” for minimizing brain tissue damage. Such trans-dural wireless telemetry must have a wide channel bandwidth for high-speed data transfer and a small form factor for minimum invasiveness. To investigate the propagation property of the channel, a finite-element model is developed, and a channel characterization based on a liquid phantom and porcine tissue is performed. The results show that the trans-dural channel has a wide frequency response of up to 250 MHz. Propagation loss due to micromotion and misalignments is also investigated in this work. The result indicates that the proposed transmission method is relatively insensitive to misalignment. It has approximately 1-dB extra loss when there is a horizontal misalignment of 1 mm. A pulse-based transmitter application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and a miniature printed circuit board (PCB) module are designed and validated ex vivo with a 10-mm-thick porcine tissue. This work demonstrates a high-speed and miniature in-body galvanic-coupled pulse-based communication with a data rate up to 250 Mb/s with an energy efficiency of 2 pJ/bit and has a small module area of only 26 mm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a bioinspired, event-driven neuromorphic sensing system (NSS) capable of performing on-chip feature extraction and “send-on-delta” pulse-based transmission, targeting peripheral nerve neural recording applications. The proposed NSS employs event-based sampling which, by leveraging the sparse nature of electroneurogram (ENG) signals, achieves a data compression ratio of $> 125\times $ , while maintaining a low normalized rms error (NRMSE) of 4% after reconstruction. The proposed NSS consists of three sub-circuits. A clockless level-crossing (LC) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with background offset calibration has been employed to reduce the data rate, while maintaining a high signal to quantization noise ratio (SQNR). A fully synthesized spiking neural network (SNN) extracts temporal features of compound action potential (CAP) signals and consumes only 13 $\mu \text{W}$. An event-driven, pulse-based body channel communication (Pulse-BCC) with serialized address-event representation (AER) encoding schemes minimizes transmission energy and form factor. The prototype is fabricated in 40-nm CMOS occupying a 0.32-mm2 active area and consumes in total 28.2 and 50 $\mu \text{W}$ power in feature extraction and full diagnosis mode, respectively. The presented NSS also extracts temporal features of CAP signals with 10- $\mu \text{s}$ precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a millimeter-scale crystal-less wireless transceiver for volume-constrained insertable pills. Operating in the 402–405 MHz medical implant communication service (MICS) band, the phase-tracking receiver-based over-the-air carrier recovery has a ±160 ppm coverage. A fully integrated adaptive antenna impedance matching solution is proposed to calibrate the antenna impedance variation inside the body. A tunable matching network (TMN) with single inductor performs impedance matching for both transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) and TX/RX mode switching. To dynamically calibrate the antenna impedance variation over different locations and diet conditions, a loop-back power detector using self-mixing is adopted, which expands the power contour up to 4.8 VSWR. The transceiver is implemented in a 40-nm CMOS technology, occupying 2 mm2 die area. The transceiver chip and a miniature antenna are integrated in a 3.5 × 15 mm2 area prototype wireless module. It has a receiver sensitivity of −90 dBm at 200 kbps data rate and delivers up to − 25 dBm EIRP in the wireless measurement with a liquid phantom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gastro-intestinal (GI) tract is a very important part of the human digestive system but remains largely inaccessible for unobtrusive monitoring. Ingestible electronic devices are a very interesting concept to address this need. This paper discusses the current state of ingestible electronic devices and explores the potential they hold to provide unprecedented insight by measuring several aspects of the complex bio-chemical processes that happen in the GI tract in real-time. This will require novel sensor technology capable of measuring relevant markers with adequate specificity and accuracy. In order to be able to scale this functionality down to a form factor of an easily digestible pill, ultra-low-power wireless interface electronics are needed. This poses certain challenges and innovation opportunities related to sensing, wireless communication and powering to enable the next generation of ingestible electronic devices. [2020-0164] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an ultra-low power wireless transceiver specialized for but not limited to medical implantable applications. It operates at the 402–405-MHz medical implant communication service band, and also supports the 420–450-MHz industrial, scientific, and medical band. Being IEEE 802.15.6 standard compliant with additional proprietary modes, this highly configurable transceiver achieves date rates from 11 kb/s to 4.5 Mb/s, which covers the requirements of conventional implantable applications. The phase-locked loop-based transmitter architecture is adopted to support various modulation schemes with limited power budget. The zero-IF receiver has programmable gain and bandwidth to accommodate different operation modes. Fabricated in 40-nm CMOS technology with 1-V supply, this transceiver only consumes 1.78 mW for transmission and 1.49 mW for reception. The ultra-low power consumption together with the 15.6-compliant performance in term of modulation accuracy, sensitivity, and interference robustness make this transceiver competent for various implantable applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]