A fully on-chip LDO voltage regulator for remotely powered cortical implants

Author

Majidzadeh, Vahid ; Schmid, Alexandre ; Leblebici, Yusuf

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Syst. Lab. (LSM), Ecole Polytech. Fed. de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

fYear

2009

fDate

14-18 Sept. 2009

Firstpage

424

Lastpage

427

Abstract

This article presents a fully on-chip low-power low drop-out (LDO) voltage regulator dedicated to remotely powered wireless cortical implants. This regulator is stable over the full range of alternating current without the need of dedicated active circuitry and increase in ground current. A new compensation technique is proposed to improve PSRR beyond the performance which can be achieved by regular cascode compensation technique. Measurement results show that the regulator has a load regulation of 0.175 V/A, a line regulation of 0.024%, and a PSRR of 37 dB at 1 MHz power carrier frequency. The output of the regulator settles within 10-bit accuracy of the nominal voltage (1.8 V) within 1.6 mus, at full load transition. The output spot noise at 100 Hz and 100 kHz are 1.1 muV/sqrt (Hz) and 390 nV/sqrt (Hz), respectively. The total ground current including the bandgap reference circuit is 28 muA and the active chip area measures 290 mumtimes360 mum in 0.18 mum CMOS technology.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; brain; load regulation; power supplies to apparatus; prosthetics; voltage regulators; CMOS technology; active chip area; bandgap reference circuit; cascode compensation technique; current 28 muA; frequency 1 MHz; frequency 100 Hz; frequency 100 kHz; line regulation; load regulation; on chip LDO voltage regulator; on chip low power low drop out voltage regulator; power supply rejection ratio; regulator output; remotely powered wireless cortical implants; size 290 mum; size 360 mum; time 1.6 mus; total ground current; voltage 1.8 V; Area measurement; CMOS technology; Circuit noise; Current measurement; Frequency measurement; Implants; Low voltage; Photonic band gap; Power measurement; Regulators; Cortical implants; Inductive Power Coupling; LDO Voltage Regulator; PSRR;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

ESSCIRC, 2009. ESSCIRC '09. Proceedings of

Conference_Location

Athens

ISSN

1930-8833

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4354-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ESSCIRC.2009.5325969

Filename

5325969