AC coupled three op-amp biopotential amplifier with active DC suppression

A three op-amps instrumentation amplifier (IA) with active DC suppression is presented. DC suppression is achieved by means of a controlled floating source at the input stage, to compensate electrode and op-amps offset voltages. This isolated floating source is built around an optical-isolated device using a general-purpose optocoupler, working as a photovoltaic generator. The proposed circuit has many interesting characteristics regarding simplicity and cost, while preserving common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) and high input impedance characteristics of the classic three op-amps IA. As an example, a biopotential amplifier with a gain of 80 dB, a lower cutoff frequency of 0.1 Hz, and a DC input range of ±8 mV was built and tested. Using general-purpose op-amps, a CMRR of 105 was achieved without trimmings.