A Novel Area Efficient Inductorless Super-Regenerative Receiver Front-End for Medical Brain Implants

Abstract

A novel area and energy efficient inductorless super-regenerative receiver (SRR) is proposed for medical brain implants dedicated to epilepsy monitoring and treatment. The proposed SRR was fabricated in UMC CMOS 180nm technology. The SRR occupies only 0.072mm2 which corresponds to an order of magnitude area reduction compared to the state-of-the-art. The SRR achieves −70dBm sensitivity and the highest data rate is 4 Mbps. 3.22 nJ/b energy efficiency is obtained with 12.9mW power consumption from a 1.8V power supply.