Simultaneous voltage and current measurement instrumentation amplifier for ECG and PPG monitoring

Abstract

An instrumentation amplifier (IA) capable of sensing both voltage and current at the same time has been introduced and applied to electrocardiogram (ECG) and photoplethysmogram (PPG) measurements for cardiovascular health monitoring applications. The proposed IA can switch between the voltage and current sensing configurations in a time–division manner faster than the ECG and PPG bandwidths. The application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) of the proposed circuit design was implemented using 180 nm CMOS fabrication technology. Input-referred voltage noise and current noise were measured as 3.9 µVrms and 172 pArms, respectively, and power consumption was measured as 34.9 µA. In the current sensing configuration, a current noise reduction technique is applied, which was confirmed to be a 25 times improvement over the previous version. Using a single IA, ECG and PPG can be monitored in the form of separated ECG and PPG signals. In addition, for the first time, a merged ECG/PPG signal is acquired, which has features of both ECG and PPG peaks.