A fully integrated low-power BPSK demodulator for implantable medical devices

During the past decades, research has progressed on the biomedical implantable electronic devices that require power and data communication through wireless inductive links. In this paper, we present a fully integrated binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) demodulator, which is based on a hard-limited COSTAS loop topology, dedicated to such implantable medical devices. The experimental results of the proposed demodulator show a data transmission rate of 1.12 Mbps, less than 0.7 mW consumption under a supply voltage of 1.8 V, and silicon area of 0.2 mm² in the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) CMOS 0.18-μm technology. The transmitter satisfies the requirement of applications relative to high forward-transferring data rate, such as cortical stimulation. Moreover, the employment of BPSK demodulation along with a passive modulation method allows full-duplex data communication between an external controller and the implantable device, which may improve the controllability and observability of the overall implanted system.