A Low-Power Ultra-Compact ultrasonic Communication System for Neural Spike Events Recording

Minimization of power consumption is one of the most challenging issues in sub-mm implanted devices for wireless neural signal recording. In this work, targeting at a brain model, we firstly perform ultrasound field simulation to find the optimal ultrasound frequency for power transmission. Then we present an ultra-compact low-power communication system through on-off keying (OOK) modulation to transmit the events of neural spikes. An analog-front-end (AFE) is proposed to filter and amplify the action potentials in a non-linear way, yielding a low power consumption of 14.1 mu W and a silicon area of 0.21 mm(2) in a 55 nm process.