A Low Power Digitally Assisted Analog Front End for Neural Interface with Optical Reception

This paper presents the design and implementation of a low power, low noise, digitally assisted analog front end for Micro Neural Interface(MNI) in 180nm CMOS technology used for Neural Spike Detection. The inductively coupled RF power harvested system uses a low power two stage neural amplifier with a mid-Band gain of 59.1 dB with a 3-dB band width(BW) of 0.45 to 8KHz, input referred noise of 8.7µVrms and power consumption of 3.19uW on less than 1V [1]. The central controller operates at 200KHz at 500mV consuming a 33.4nW of power while transmitting 8-bit neural data at 200kbps data rate to the final stage [1]. The simulation results and silicon correlation shows the suitability of the Neural Spike Detection system. Fabrication was carried out in UMC 180nm CMOS.