A Low Noise Amplifier for Neural Spike Recording Interfaces
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Published on: July 5, 2013
Jesus Ruiz-Amaya1, Alberto Rodriguez-Perez2, Manuel Delgado-Restituto3
1Institute of Microelectronics of Seville, Avda. Americo Vespucio s/n, Sevilla 41092, Spain. ruiz@imse-cnm.csic.es.
Abstract:
This paper presents a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) for neural spike recording applications. The proposed topology, based on a capacitive feedback network using a two-stage OTA, efficiently solves the triple trade-off between power, area and noise. Additionally, this work introduces a novel transistor-level synthesis methodology for LNAs tailored for the minimization of their noise efficiency factor under area and noise constraints. The proposed LNA has been implemented in a 130 nm CMOS technology and occupies 0.053 mm-sq. Experimental results show that the LNA offers a noise efficiency factor of 2.16 and an input referred noise of 3.8 μVrms for 1.2 V power supply. It provides a gain of 46 dB over a nominal bandwidth of 192 Hz-7.4 kHz and consumes 1.92 μW. The performance of the proposed LNA has been validated through in vivo experiments with animal models.
