A 20 pJ/b (10 µW) digital receiver based on a new modulation (SAS) for retinal prosthesis application

Low power consumption and small size transceivers are critical for biomedical instruments and devices specially those that are implanted. In this paper a novel modulation scheme called saturated analog signal (SAS) has been developed that can reduce the power consumption and area of the receiver. The new CMOS receiver is implemented in 65nm technology and operates in the MICS band (402–405 MHz), while consumes 10 µW from a 1 V power supply to deliver 500 Kb/s of data and occupies an area of just 0.6 mm2. This is equivalent to an energy consumption of 20 pJ/b and the design is capable of being fully integrated on single chip solutions for retinal prosthesis and embedded neural applications.