Front-end circuit design for electroencephalography (EEG) signal

Abstract

Electroencephalography (EEG) signals are recorded for knowing the electrical activity of the brain from the scalp, and the recorded waveform provides acquits into the dynamic aspects of brain activity. This study incorporates the circuit design and device development to achieve the Electroencephalography signal acquisition front-end circuit design for future Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) applications. The amplitude of acquired signals should be strong enough and is usually expressed in the unit of millivolts. The data acquisition procedure consists three stages: 1) The acquisition of original EEG signal can be done by the active electrode and an instrumentation amplifier with a smaller gain; 2) Improves the signal quality by using band-pass filter and band-stop filter; 3) Those EEG signals convert into the digital code through the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that will be integrated into a micro-controller. The digital code is stored into an embedded memory and is further transmitted via the Bluetooth module. The experimental results show that the system could implement the acquisition and storage of the EEG signals efficiently. The size of the printed circuit board (PCB) for the proposed design is smaller than 5.5 cm2. This system would be a benefit to all involved in the use of EEG for clinical diagnosis and monitoring, or even for the braincomputer interface.