The Zoom ADC: An Evolving Architecture

Zoom ADCs combine a coarse SAR ADC with a fine delta-sigma modulator (?SM) to efficiently obtain high energy efficiency and high dynamic range. This makes them well suited for use in various instrumentation and audio applications. However, zoom ADCs also have drawbacks. The use of over-ranging in their fine modulators may limit SNDR, large...

Chopper PWM-Based Class-D Amplifier

Class-D amplifiers are widely used in audio applications that require a high power efficiency. A high PSRR is beneficial when the power supply contains significant audio band content. Due to mismatches present in the feedback, these can dominate the PSRR of the class-D amplifier, provided the amplifier has sufficient loop gain. No literature has...

Active Electrodes for Wearable EEG Acquisition: Review and Design Methodology

Active electrodes (AEs), i.e., electrodes with built-in readout circuitry, are increasingly being implemented in wearable healthcare and lifestyle applications due to AEs' robustness to environmental interference. An AE locally amplifies and buffers μV-level EEG signals before driving any cabling. The low output impedance of an AE mitigates...

A 0.6V, 1μW, low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier for ECG/BioZ measurement in 40nm CMOS

This thesis presents a low-power low-noise instrumentation amplifier designed to be implemented in 40 nm CMOS technology and operating from a 0.6 V supply, intended for use in electrocardiogram (ECG) and bio-impedance (BioZ) signal acquisition. This instrumentation amplifier has one ECG channel, one BioZ channel and allows both signals to be...

Fully Integrated Analog Front-end for a 2-electrode ECG device

Cardiovascular diseases are leading cause of deaths worldwide. With increasing graying population and limited health infrastructure there is a need for portable and implantable ECG devices to diagnose these diseases early on. In general an ECG device requires three or more electrodes, which need to be applied to the body via a gel, to obtain a...