Microwatt Embedded Processor Platform for Medical System-on-Chip Applications

Author

Sridhara, Srinivasa R. ; DiRenzo, Michael ; Lingam, Srinivas ; Lee, Seok-Jun ; Blázquez, Raul ; Maxey, Jay ; Ghanem, Samer ; Lee, Yu-Hung ; Abdallah, Rami ; Singh, Prashant ; Goel, Manish

Author_Institution

Texas Instrum., Dallas, TX, USA

Volume

46

Issue

4

fYear

2011

fDate

4/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

721

Lastpage

730

Abstract

Battery life specifications drive the power consumption requirements of integrated circuits in implantable, wearable, and portable medical devices. In this paper, we present an embedded processor platform chip using an ARM Cortex-M3 suitable for mapping medical applications requiring microwatt power consumption. Ultra-low-power operation is achieved via 0.5-1.0 V operation, a 28 fW/bit fully differential subthreshold 6T SRAM, a 90%-efficient DC-DC converter, and a 100-nJ fast Fourier transform (FFT) accelerator to reduce processor workload. Using a combination of novel circuit design, system architecture, and SoC implementation, the first sub-microwatt per channel electroencephalograph (EEG) seizure detection is demonstrated.

Keywords

DC-DC power convertors; SRAM chips; biomedical electronics; electroencephalography; embedded systems; fast Fourier transforms; integrated circuit design; low-power electronics; microcontrollers; seizure; system-on-chip; ARM Cortex-M3; DC-DC converter; EEG; FFT accelerator; SoC; battery life specification; differential subthreshold 6T SRAM; fast Fourier transform accelerator; implantable medical device; integrated circuit design; integrated circuit power consumption; medical system-on-chip application; microwatt embedded processor platform chip; portable medical device; sub-microwatt per channel electroencephalograph seizure detection; ultra-low-power operation; wearable medical device; Computer architecture; Converters; Frequency control; Rails; Random access memory; System-on-a-chip; Threshold voltage; DC-DC converter; EEG; FFT; SRAM; seizure detection; ultra-low power;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JSSC.2011.2108910

Filename

5719133