Industry Compliant Wireless Power and Data Transfer Module Towards Ensuring Battery Denial of Service Protection

The field of active implantable medical devices (IMDs) has made huge steps forward in the last years. IMDs are used today for the treatment of previously untreatable conditions as well as the continuous monitoring of the health of patients. The field, where active IMDs have been the most successful, is the field of neurological conditions, on...

ENMOS: Energy Module for Self-Sustainable Wearable Sensors

This work focuses on addressing the fundamental limitation on the minimum cold start-up voltage that could be harvested from a thermoelectric element (TEG) for human-body wearable applications. For ultra-low DC voltages, the challenge translates to generating a timed-signal to amplify it up to a value that could be used to drive, say, a boost...

Multichannel LC ADC: to Record Atrial Electrograms

Biosignals such as electoencephalogram (EEG), electrocorticogram (ECoG), atrial electrogram (AEG) etc. are being recorded from multiple channels simultaneously to improve the spatial resolution of the signals. Conventional multichannel synchronous Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) are used to convert the analog continuous time signals into...

Energy harvesting on the human body: Hybrid charge pump design for cold start compatibility and high efficiency harvesting with minimal footprint

This work proposes a new charge pump design suitable for energy harvesting on small human wearable devices. By using only one system for both cold start and high efficiency harvesting, the required silicon area is heavily reduced. The most fitting energy transducer is determined to be a photovoltaic cell, based on aspects of voltage, power and...

Analysing the performance of KHFAC nerve block stimulation parameters: Developing design considerations for blocking the pudendal nerve using a new gate-dependent block determination model

A major cause for voiding dysfunction is the inability to relax the urethral sphincter. KiloHertz Frequency Alternating Current (KHFAC) stimulation can block signals that are travelling through the body; applying this type of stimulation at the pudendal nerve could inhibit the pulses that lead to contraction of the urethral sphincter, and...

Resistive Matching using an AC Boost Converter for Efficient Ultrasonic Wireless Power Transfer

Implantable Medical Devices (IMDs) could fulfill many different functions in the human body. Batteries have always been the main power source of these devices. Batteries have some drawbacks, the biggest one being the replacement of IMDs with fully discharged batteries. In this thesis a wireless power transfer system, with a receiving power...

Design and MEMS Microfabrication of an Optrode for Combined Optogenetics and Electrophysiology Studies

Optogenetics is a biological technique that uses light to control cells in living tissues, typically neurons, that have been genetically modified to express light-sensitive ion channels. Using this technique, neuroscientists can investigate the neural circuits underlying neurological diseases with a higher spatio-temporal resolution when...

Stochastic Resonance Analog-to-Digital Conversion: 1-Bit Signal Acquisition Employing Noise

Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon in which the presence of noise increases the performance of the system. The phenomenon has first been discovered in a climate change model and is later observed in neuronal systems. In artificial, electronic, systems, stochastic resonance is observed in systems based on Schmitt-Triggers and comparators....

Safety Module for a High Frequency Arbitrary Waveform Generator

The goal of the REValUE Project is to design a test device which is able to stimulate nerve tissue with current driven, high frequency stimulation in the range from 1 to 15 kHz and 1 to 10 mA. The test device will be used in research to pudendal nerve blockage. This thesis describes the design process of a safety module for this device. The...

Arbitrary Waveform Generator for a High Frequency Arbitrary Waveform Neural Stimulator

The goal of this Bachelor graduation project is to make an electrical stimulator that can be used to help people empty their urinary bladder. Patients that are unable to relax the urethral sphincter are most commonly treated by mechanically emptying the bladder or by sacral root stimulation where the roots are selectively cut. <br/><br/>The...

Control & Interface for a High Frequency Arbitrary Waveform generator

In the REstore Voiding Urinary rEtention (REValUE) project, a high frequency stimulator is designed that should be able to determine the optimal parameters to block the urethral sphincter. In this report the design of the control, interface, current source and electrode switching circuit of the device is explained – the other parts are explained...

Noise correlations and template matching on neural recordings

Spike sorting is the gold standard algorithm to detect and classify neural spikes in extracellular electrophysiological data. The classical spike sorting algorithm is, however, not scalable to process thousands of neurons, and not fast enough to be applied on real time. Alternatively other algorithms have been implemented that are not only...

IQ offset and gain mismatch compensation for phase-domain ADC

A phase-domain analog-to-digital converter (PhADC) is a promising alternative to a pair of amplitude-domain in-phase and quadrature (IQ) ADCs for low power FSK/PSK demodulation, but due to the nonlinear amplitude-to-phase conversion, IQ offsets and gain mismatch can produce nonlinear phase distortions which that can lead to phase errors and an...

Passive Wireless ECoG Monitoring On Multiple Subjects

The neuroscience department of the Erasmus Medical Centre (EMC) has been working for many years to analyse the epilepsy and the treatments. It is a part of the neuro research in the collaborations between the Erasmus Medical Centre (EMC) neuroscience department and the section Bioelectronics at Delft University of Technology. The system is...

SOMNUS: An Ultra-Wideband Radar-Based Approach for Neonatal Sleep State Classification

Recently, there has been an increasing awareness of the critical role of sleep for the brain development of young infants. During the early neonatal stages of human development, the basic activity of the brain is to develop itself during sleep. Prolonged sleep is required in infants for further development of the nervous system. Sleep also plays...

System Building Blocks for Mathematical Operators Using Stochastic Resonance: Application in an Action Potential Detection System

Stochastic resonance (SR) is a phenomenon where the performance of a nonlinear system subjected to noise is better than it is without noise. This phenomenon can be found both in natural and artificial systems, especially in threshold-based systems such as comparators or a population of neurons. As noise always exists and interacts with the...