A digital driven right leg circuit

A novel scheme and a digital approach to the Driven Right Leg Circuit (DRL) are presented. It presents an ultra high common mode (CM) reduction of power line interference (higher than 80dB) without endangering stability. This improves by 40-50dB the CM reduction provided by a classical analog DRL, retaining the same stability criterion. The improvement comes from the inclusion of a high Q resonator in parallel with the common mode amplifier. It provides a large gain at power line frequency (50/60 Hz) whereas it does not significantly affect the open loop gain for high frequencies. The proposed scheme can be thought as an analog circuit, but the accuracy required, mainly in the resonator frequency response, leads to a digital implementation. In this way, component ageing and thermal fluctuation problems are avoided, as well as the need for manual adjusting. A prototype of the proposed DRL circuit was built and tested in laboratory conditions showing an open-loop gain of 74dB at 50Hz. It was also tested by acquiring real EEG signals.