A VLSI Neural Monitoring System With Ultra-Wideband Telemetry for Awake Behaving Subjects

• Published in: IEEE transactions on biomedical circuits and systems Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 112 - 119
• Main Authors: Greenwald, E, Mollazadeh, M, Hu, C, Wei Tang, Culurciello, E, Thakor, V
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.04.2011; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Batteries; Biopotential amplifier; digital telemetry; electrocorticogram; electroencephalogram; Field programmable gate arrays; headmounted systems; Lithium; local field potentials; Microcontrollers; micropower instrumentation; neural interface; Product introduction; Receivers; Sensors; Telemetry; Transmitters; ultra-wideband telemetry; Very large scale integration; Wireless communication; wireless neural recording
• ISSN: 1932-4545; 1940-9990
• DOI: 10.1109/TBCAS.2011.2141670

Long-term monitoring of neuronal activity in awake behaving subjects can provide fundamental information about brain dynamics for neuroscience and neuroengineering applications. Here, we present a miniature, lightweight, and low-power recording system for monitoring neural activity in awake behaving animals. The system integrates two custom designed very-large-scale integrated chips, a neural interface module fabricated in 0.5 μm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology and an ultra-wideband transmitter module fabricated in a 0.5 μm silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) technology. The system amplifies, filters, digitizes, and transmits 16 channels of neural data at a rate of 1 Mb/s. The entire system, which includes the VLSI circuits, a digital interface board, a battery, and a custom housing, is small and lightweight (24 g) and, thus, can be chronically mounted on small animals. The system consumes 4.8 mA and records continuously for up to 40 h powered by a 3.7-V, 200-mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Experimental benchtop characterizations as well as in vivo multichannel neural recordings from awake behaving rats are presented here.