An ultra-low-power, low-noise tunable electrocardiogram amplifier

摘要

The objective of this research work is to propose an innovative low-power, low-noise, tunable three-stage capacitive instrumentation amplifier, capable of receiving and magnifying the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. This is done by adding an extra stage to the second stage of the conventional capacitive instrumentation amplifier. The results show similar midband gain with lesser capacitor usage and smaller chip occupancy area with provision of concurrent tunable gain and bandwidth. The proposed amplifier is designed and implemented using TSMC 0.18-mu m CMOS technology scale under a 1-V supply voltage with the simulation process carried out using Cadence Virtuoso tool. Post-layout simulation results show that the amplifier has a tunable midband gain of 55 to 65.6 dB, low-cutoff frequency tuned from 377 mHz to 4.5 Hz and high-cutoff frequency tuned from 86.8 to 263.6 Hz. The simulated value of the input-referred noise and noise efficiency factor (NEF) of the amplifier are 9.6 mu V(rms)and 6.1, respectively, with the total power consumption of 71.2 nW.