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Fully integrated signal conditioning of an accelerometer for implantable pacemakers

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Abstract

This paper shows the development of a fully integrated G m -C 0.5–7 Hz bandpass amplifier (gain G = 400), for a piezoelectric accelerometer to be employed in rate adaptive pacemakers. The circuit, fabricated in a standard 0.8 micron CMOS technology, operates with a power supply as low as 2 V, consumes 230 nA of current, and has only a 2.1 μVrms input referred noise. Detailed circuit specifications, measurements, and a system performance comparative analysis are presented. The physical activity system includes a fully integrated G m -C rectifier and 3-second time average. Fully integrated very low frequency circuits were implemented with the aid of series-parallel current division in symmetrical OTAs. OTAs as low as 33 pS (equivalent to a 30 GΩ resistor) were designed, fabricated, and tested.

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Correspondence to Alfredo Arnaud.

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Alfredo Arnaud received the M.S., and Ph.D. degree in electronics from the Universidad de la República, Montevideo-Uruguay, in 2000, and 2004. Since 1997, he was involved in several research and industrial projects, in the field of CMOS analog design, and optoelectronics. In 2004, he joined the Electrical Engineering Department, Universidad Católica, Montevideo-Uruguay. His current research interests include high-performance circuits for implantable medical devices and analog signal processing, and MOS transistor modeling.

Carlos Galup-Montoro studied engineering sciences at the University of the Republic, Uruguay, and received the Engineer degree in electronics and the Doctor Engineer degree from the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, in 1979 and 1982, respectively.

 From 1982 to 1989, he was with University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, where he was involved in bipolar and MOS analog design. Since 1990, he has been with the Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis, Brazil. His main research interests are device modeling and transistor-level design.

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Arnaud, A., Galup-Montoro, C. Fully integrated signal conditioning of an accelerometer for implantable pacemakers. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 49, 313–321 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-006-9708-y

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