A 0.35μm CMOS UWB-Inspired Bidirectional Communication System-on-Chip for Transcutaneous Optical Biotelemetry Links

In this paper we report on the fabrication, implementation and experimental characterization of an integrated bidirectional communication System-on-Chip (SoC) for transcutaneous bidirectional optical biotelemetry links. The proposed architecture implements a UWB-inspired pulsed coding technique and contains a transmitter and a receiver to achieve a simultaneous bidirectional link. The transmitter generates sub-nanosecond current pulses to directly drive off-chip pulsed vertical cavity semiconductor lasers by means of a digital data coding subsystem and all the needed bias and driving circuits. The receiver interfaces to off-chip fast Si photodiodes and includes signal conditioning, detection and digital data decoding circuits to support high bit rate and energy efficient communication links. The SoC has been implemented in a commercially-Available 0.35 μm CMOS technology provided by AMS, occupying a compact silicon footprint of less than 0.13 mm2 employing 113 transistors and 1 resistor. This is evaluated using a testbench consisting of a custom PCB and a Xilinx Virtex-6 XC6VLX240T FPGA board. Preliminary experimental results validated the correct functionality of the overall integrated system demonstrating its capability to operate, also in a bidirectional mode, at bit rates up to 250 Mbps with pulse widths down to 1.2 ns and a minimum total power efficiency of about 160 pJ/bit in the conditions for which the transmitter and the receiver work simultaneously on the same chip. This demonstrated performance makes the optical biotelemetry particularly suitable for highly scalable (i.e., high bitrate, low energy per bit) implantable devices such as brain machine interfaces.