• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.309-315
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• 2010

A fully-differential low-voltage low-power electrocardiogram (ECG) amplifier by using the nonfeedback PMOS pseudo-resistors is proposed. It consists of two operational-transconductance amplifiers (OTA) in series (a preamplifier and a variable-gain amplifier). To make it insensitive to the gate leakage current of the OTA input transistor, the feedback pseudo-resistor of the conventional ECG amplifier is moved to input branch between the OP amp summing node and the DC reference voltage. Also, an OTA circuit with a Gm boosting block without reducing the output resistance (Ro) is proposed to maximize the OTA DC gain. The measurements shows the frequency bandwidth from 7 Hz to 480 Hz, the midband gain programmable from 48.7 dB to 59.5 dB, the total harmonic distortion (THD) less than 1.21% with a full voltage swing, and the power consumption of 233 nW in a 0.13 ${\mu}m$ CMOS process at the supply voltage of 0.7 V.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.1303-1310
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• 2016

In this paper, electrocardiogram (ECG) analog front end with supply voltage of 0.5V has been designed and verified by measurements of fabricated chip. ECG is composed of instrument amplifier, 6th order gm-C low pass filter and variable gain amplifier. The instrument amplifier is designed to have gain of 34.8dB and the 6th order gm-C low pass filter is designed to obtain the cutoff frequency of 400Hz. The operational transconductance amplifier of the low pass filter utilizes body-driven differential input stage for low voltage operation. The variable gain amplifier is designed to have gain of 6.1~26.4dB. The electrocardiogram analog front end are fabricated in TSMC $0.18{\mu}m$ CMOS process with chip size of $858{\mu}m{\times}580{\mu}m$. Measurements of the fabricated chip is done not to saturate the gain of ECG by changing the external resistor and measured gain of 28.7dB and cutoff frequency of 0.5 - 630Hz are obtained using the supply voltage of 0.5V.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.432-440
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• 2023

This study introduces an efficient readout circuit designed for two-electrode electrocardiogram (ECG) recording, characterized by its low-noise and low-power consumption attributes. Unlike its three-electrode counterpart, the two-electrode ECG is susceptible to common-mode interference (CMI), causing signal distortion. To counter this, the proposed circuit integrates a common-mode charge pump (CMCP) with a window comparator, allowing for a CMI tolerance of up to 20 V_PP. The CMCP design prevents the activation of electrostatic discharge (ESD) diodes and becomes operational only when CMI surpasses the predetermined range set by the window comparator. This ensures power efficiency and minimizes intermodulation distortion (IMD) arising from switching noise. To maintain ECG signal accuracy, the circuit employs a chopper-stabilized instrumentation amplifier (IA) for low-noise attributes, and to achieve high input impedance, it incorporates a floating high-pass filter (HPF) and a current-feedback instrumentation amplifier (CFIA). This comprehensive design integrates various components, including a QRS peak detector and serial peripheral interface (SPI), into a single 0.18-㎛ CMOS chip occupying 0.54 mm². Experimental evaluations showed a 0.59 µV_RMS noise level within a 1-100 Hz bandwidth and a power draw of 23.83 µW at 1.8 V.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.300-308
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• 2010

This paper describes the development of a low-power electrocardiogram (ECG) touch sensor intended for the use with two dry metal electrodes. An equivalent ECG extraction circuit model encountered in a ground-free two-electrode configuration is investigated for an optimal sensor read-out circuit design criteria. From the equivalent circuit model, (1) maximum sensor resolution is derived based on the electrode's background thermal noise, which originates from high electrode-skin contact impedance, together with the input referred noise of instrumentation amplifier (IA), (2) 60 Hz electrostatic coupling from mains and motion artifact are also considered to determine minimum requirement of common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) and input impedance of IA. A dedicated ECG read-out front end incorporating chopping scheme is introduced to provide an input referred circuit noise of 1.3 ${\mu}V_{rms}$ over 0.5 Hz ~ 200 Hz, CMRR of IA > 100 dB, sensor resolution of 7 bits, and dissipating only 36 ${\mu}W$. Together with 8 bits synchronous successive approximation register (SAR) ADC, the sensor IC chip is implemented in 0.18 ${\mu}m$ CMOS technology and integrated on a 5 cm $\times$ 8 cm PCB with two copper patterned electrodes. With the help of proposed touch sensor, ECG signal containing QRS complex and P, T waves are successfully extracted by simply touching the electrodes with two thumbs.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.776-781
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• 2008

In this study, ubiquitous health care system attaching in chair to monitor ECG for health care was developed at the unconsciousness state. The system conveniently and simple measured ECG at non-consciousness. We measured the contact impedance to skin-electrode of metal mesh electrodes of the system. Contact impedance enable the electrode to use for ECG measurement. The results are that the impedance of the metal mesh electrodes according to sizes is low when the size is 4$cm^2$. As the result, when the size of the metal mesh electrode is 4$cm^2$, the electrode is fit for ECG measurement. We can acquired by positing the arm on the metal mesh electrode. The ECG signal was detected using a high-input-impedance bio-amplifier, and then passed filter circuitry. The measured signal transmitted to a PC through the bluetooth wireless communication and monitored. Data of the non-constrained ECG system attaching in chair is noise-data when comparing metal mesh electrode with the Ag/Agcl electrode but the data is significant to monitor ECG for check the body state.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.11c
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• pp.920-923
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• 2003

An wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring system is a widely used non-invasive diagnostic tool for ambulatory patient who may be at risk from latent life-threatening cardiac abnormalities. In this paper, we have a portable ECG monitoring system with conductive fiber which was characterized by the small-size and the low power consumption. The system consists of conductive fibers, one-chip microcontroller, ECG preprocessing circuit, and monitoring software to be able to record and analyze in PC. ECG preprocessing circuit is made of pre-amplifier with gain of 10, band-pass filter with bandwidth of 0.5-120Hz and 2.5V offset circuit for A/D conversion. ECG signals obtained by sensor are included with corrupted noises such as a baseline wandering, 60 Hz power noise and interference noise by body movement. For cancellation corrupted noises in signals obtained by conductive fiber, we used the wavelet decomposition of wavelet transforms in MATLAB toolbox.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.104-111
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• 2008

The ECG is biomedical electrical signal occurring on the surface of the body due to the contraction and relaxation of the heart. This signal represents an extremely important measure for health monitoring, as it provides vital information about a patient's cardiac condition and general health. ECG signals are contaminated with high frequency noise such as power line interference, muscle artifact and low frequency nose such as motion artifact. But it is difficult to filter nose from ECG signal, and errors resulting from filtering can distort a ECG signal. The present study implemented a small-size and low-power ECG measurement system that can remove motion artifact for convenient health monitoring during daily life. The implemented ECG monitoring system consists of ECG amplifier, a low power microprocessor, bluetooth module and monitoring program. Amplifier was designed and implemented using low power instrumentation amplifier, and microprocessor was interfaced to the ECG amplifier to collect the data, process, store and feed to a transmitter. And bluetooth module used to wirelessly transmit and receive the vital sign data from the microprocessor to an PC at the receiving site. In order to evaluate the performance of the implemented system, we assessed motion artifact rejection performance in each situation with artificially set condition using adaptive filter.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.857-861
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• 2016

In this study, we proposed a new method that can be measure ECG (Electrocardiography) and PPG (Photoplethysmography) in realtime on the site of the wrist for check the state of health in daily life. For convenience measurement of ECG the lead I method was used on the wrist, and omit the reference junction ECG I was measured in the right hand and the left hand of the potential difference. Then the measured electrocardiogram was amplified by the differential amplifier and the signals were passed HPF, LPF, and BPF filters. For removing the PPG's noise from the Motion artifact and temperature, we apply the reflective photoelectric volume pulse wave measurement method using green LED as a light source. The circuits was designed to be able to check the waveform using higher active amplification method at weak signals. For the validation of our device, the measured signals were compared with E2-KIT on same time. The results shows that the error does not exceed the maximum one, most of the data is confirmed to be issued Peak inspection of the same number.

• The Journal of Korea Institute of Information, Electronics, and Communication Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.109-116
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• 2022

In this paper, we propose a band rejection filter (BRF) with a state variable filter (SVF) structure to effectively remove the influence of 60 Hz line frequency noise introduced into the sensor system. The conventional BRF of the SVF structure uses an additional operational amplifier (OPAMP) to add a low pass filter (LPF) output and a high pass filter (HPF) output or an input signal and a band pass filter. Therefore, the notch frequency and the notch depth that determine the signal attenuation of the BRF greatly depend on the tolerance of the resistors used to obtain the sum or difference of the signals. On the other hand, in the proposed BRF, since the BRF output is formed naturally within the SVF structure, there is no need for a combination between each port. The notch frequency of the proposed BRF is 59.99 Hz, and it can be confirmed that it is not affected at all by the tolerance of the resistor through the Monte Carlo simulation results. The notch depth also has an average of -42.54dB and a standard deviation of 0.63dB, confirming that normal operation as a BRF is possible. Also, with the proposed BRF, noise filtering was applied to the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal that interfered with 60 Hz noise, and it was confirmed that the 60 Hz noise was appropriately suppressed.