To detect neural spike signals, low-power neural signal recording frontend circuits must amplify neural signals with below 100 µV amplitude and a few hundred Hz frequency while suppressing a large DC offset voltage, 1/f noise of MOSFETs, and induced noise of AC power supply. To overcome the problem of unwanted noise at such a low signal level, a low-noise neural signal detection amplifier with low-frequency noise suppression scheme was developed utilizing a new autozeroing technique. A test chip was designed and fabricated with a mixed signal 0.18-µm CMOS technology. The voltage gain of 39 dB at the bandwidth of the neural signal and the gain reduction of 20 dB at AC supply noise of 60 Hz were obtained. The input equivalent noise and power dissipation were 90 nV/root-Hz and 90 µW at a supply voltage of 1.5 V, respectively.

We propose a low-noise and low-power dynamic comparator with an offset calibration circuit for Low-Power ADCs. The proposed comparator equips the control circuit in order to switching the comparison accuracy and the current consumption. When high accuracy is not required, current consumption is reduced by allowing the noise increase. Compared with a traditional dynamic comparator, the proposed architecture reduced the current consumption to 78% at 100MHz operating and 1.8V supply voltage. Furthermore, the offset voltage is corrected with minimal current consumption by controlling the on/off operation of the offset calibration circuit.

Recent progress in scaled CMOS technologies can enhance signal bandwidth and clock frequency of analog-digital mixed VLSIs. However, the inevitable reduction of supply voltage causes a signal voltage mismatch between a non-scaled analog chip and a scaled A-D mixed chip. To overcome this problem, we present a Delta-Amplifier (DeltAMP) which can handle larger signal amplitude than the supply voltage. DeltaAMP folds a delta signal of an input voltage within a window using a virtual ground amplifier, modulation switches and comparators. For reconstruction of the folded delta signal to the ordinal signal, Analog-Time-Digital conversion (ATD) was also proposed, in which pulse-width analog information obtained at the comparators in DeltAMP was converted to a digital signal by counting. A test chip of DeltAMP with ATD was designed and fabricated using a 90 nm CMOS technology. A 2 Vpp input voltage range and 50 µW power consumption were achieved by the measurements with a 0.5 V supply. High accuracy of 62 dB SNR was obtained at signal bandwidth of 120 kHz.

A low-noise CMOS amplifier operating at a low supply voltage is developed using the two noise reduction techniques of autozeroing and chopper stabilization. The proposed amplifier utilizes a feedback with virtual grounded input-switches and a multiple-output switched op-amp. The low-noise amplifier fabricated in a 0.18-µm CMOS technology achieved 50-nV/Hz input noise at 1-MHz chopping and 0.5-mW power consumption at 1-V supply voltage.