Wireless multichannel acquisition of neuropotentials

Implantable brain-machine interfaces for disease diagnosis and motor prostheses control require low-power acquisition of neuropotentials spanning a wide range of amplitudes and frequencies. Here, we present a 16-channel VLSI neuropotential acquisition system with tunable gain and bandwidth, and variable rate digital transmission over an inductive link which further supplies power. The neuropotential interface chip is composed of an amplifier, incremental ADC and bit-serial readout circuitry. The front-end amplifier has a midband gain of 40 dB and offers NEF of less than 3 for all bandwidth settings. It also features adjustable low-frequency cut-off from 0.2 to 94 Hz, and independent high-frequency cut-off from 140 Hz to 8.2 kHz. The Gm-C incremental DeltaSigma ADC offers digital gain up to 4096 and 8-12 bits resolution. The interface circuit is powered by a telemetry chip which harvests power through inductive coupling from a 4 MHz link, provides a 1 MHz clock for ADC operation and transmits the bit-serial data of the neurpotential interface across 4 cm at up to 32 kbps with a BER less than 10-5. Experimental EEG recordings using the neuropotential interface and wireless module are presented.