Power supply quality and stability are critical for wearable and implantable biomedical applications. For this reason we have designed a reconfigurable switched-capacitor DC-DC converter that, aside from having an extremely small footprint (with an active on-chip area of only 0.04 mm2), uses a novel output voltage control method based upon a combination of adaptive gain and discrete frequency scaling control schemes. This novel DC-DC converter achieves a measured output voltage range of 1.0 to 2.2 V with power delivery up to 7.5 mW with 75% efficiency. In this paper, we present the use of this converter as a power supply for a concept design of a wearable (15 mm × 15 mm) 1-lead ECG front-end sensor device that simultaneously harvests power and communicates with external receivers when exposed to a suitable RF field. Due to voltage range limitations of the fabrication process of the current prototype chip, we focus our analysis solely on the power supply of the ECG front-end whose design is also detailed in this paper. Measurement results show not just that the power supplied is regulated, clean and does not infringe upon the ECG bandwidth, but that there is negligible difference between signals acquired using standard linear power-supplies and when the power is regulated by our power management chip.
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机译：电源质量和稳定性对于可穿戴和可植入生物医学应用至关重要。因此，我们设计了一种可重新配置的开关电容器DC-DC转换器，该转换器除了占用空间极小（有源片上面积仅为0.04 mm 2 ）之外，还使用了新颖的输出自适应增益和离散频率缩放控制方案相结合的电压控制方法。这款新颖的DC-DC转换器可实现1.0至2.2 V的测量输出电压范围，功率输出高达7.5 mW，效率为75％。在本文中，我们介绍了使用该转换器作为可穿戴式（15 mm×15 mm）1引线ECG前端传感器设备概念设计的电源，当该传感器设备暴露于环境中时，该设备可以同时采集功率并与外部接收器通信合适的射频场。由于当前原型芯片制造工艺的电压范围限制，我们仅将分析重点放在ECG前端的电源上，本文还将详细介绍其设计。测量结果表明，不仅调节的电源干净，不破坏ECG带宽，而且使用标准线性电源所获得的信号与通过我们的电源管理芯片调节的信号之间的差异可以忽略不计。
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