A Wide-Dynamic-Range Neural-Recording IC With Automatic-Gain-Controlled AFE and CT Dynamic-Zoom Delta Sigma ADC for Saturation-Free Closed-Loop Neural Interfaces

Abstract

This article presents a neural-recording IC with automatic gain control (AGC) according to the input signal level. AGC enhances the dynamic range (DR) of the recording IC by more than 30 dB and allows it to take the benefits of the front-end amplification-based and direct-conversion-based recording structures concurrently. By adaptively controlling the analog front-end (AFE) gain, the input-referred noise (IRN) of the overall system is greatly reduced while ensuring a wide DR. A continuoustime (CT) dynamic-zoom Delta Sigma ADC (CT-Zoom-ADC) is used for power-efficient two-step conversion. The coarse conversion output is reused for AGC, and the fine conversion resolution is adjusted adaptively by modifying the oversampling ratio according to the varying AFE gain. The presented neural-recording IC achieves 99.5-dB DR and 6.1-mu V-rms IRN over 5-kHz bandwidth, resulting in FoM(DR) of 185.2 dB, the effective number of bits (ENOB) of 11.4 bits, and tolerance against artifacts with differential voltage amplitudes up to 1.6 V-pp. Measurements with pulsatile artifacts and experiments in vivo validate that the proposed IC is applicable to the closed-loop neural interface.