Reliability analysis for integrated circuit amplifiers used in neural measurement systems

NBTI and HCI are not only present in digital circuits but also in analog circuitry. Integrated circuit amplifiers as used in neural measurement systems (NMS) need to be resistive against degradation since these systems cannot be replaced easily. A topology driven design methodology to increase the reliability of amplifiers used for intracortical neural recording has been proposed in this work. This approach leads to a decrease in degradation for some system performances by a factor of three. It has been shown that the degradation of a circuit is highly dependent on the selected current mirror and biasing circuit.