Analog Front-End Circuits for Massive Parallel 3-D Neural Microsystems
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ANALOG FRONT-END CIRCUITS FOR MASSIVE PARALLEL 3-D NEURAL MICROSYSTEMS by Khaled M. Alashmouny A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Electrical Engineering) in The University of Michigan 2013 Doctoral Committee: Professor Euisik Yoon, Chair Associate Professor Joshua Berke Professor Khalil Najafi Assistant Professor David Wentzloff Professor Kensall Wise © Khaled M. Alashmouny _______________________________ All rights reserved 2013 All Praise belongs to Allah the Lord of mankind. To my father Mohamed, my mother Laila, and my lovely wife Manar. You always inspire me. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, it was a pleasure to work with my research advisor, Professor Euisik Yoon. It was a great experience as I learned and enjoyed a lot his challenges and guidance throughout my Ph.D. I still remember the joy I had when I started working with Prof. Yoon in deeply understanding the basic electrical definition of a ground and trying to predict the behavior of signal transmission within the brain. What I learned the most from him was the exploration of the different aspects in a microsystem design although I end up focusing more onto circuit design. Prof. Yoon always encouraged me to be a proactive person and this has reflected into a lot of the contributions and volunteering activities I decided to make for our lab, the University, and the society. I would like to thank my committee members Dr. Kensall Wise, Dr. Khalil Najafi, Dr. Joshua Berke, and Dr. David Wentzloff for their time and their great suggestions and feedback. Special thanks to Dr. Wentzloff, who was always very welcoming whenever I needed an advice. Special thanks to Dr. Berke inspired me through different discussions and advises to look further into the neuroscience viewpoint. His lab members, especially Jeff Pettibone, were very welcoming to answer the questions I had and provided very informative data. A special thanks to Dr. Wise who is really a true model for me; he was always open to discuss entrepreneurial stuff with me although he always had a busy schedule. Thanks to Dr. Najafi for his suggestions, inspiration, and encouragement. I am also grateful for the center of Wireless Integrated Microsystem (WIMS) at the University of Michigan, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Rackham Graduate School for the financial support. I would like thank all my colleagues in Yoon’s group, who made it fun to work in an inspiring environment. A special thanks to my friend, Seok-Jun Park, who was always helpful and generous. Another special thanks to Sun-Il Chang; he is a great friend and partner in a lot of circuit ideas. Special thanks to the whole neural circuits’ team: Sung- iii Yun, Adam, and Yu-Ju. I was inspired by them and learned a lot from our discussions. Another special thanks to Jihyun, who was very helpful at very critical times. I would also like to thank many people in the administration of EECS, WIMS, and SSEL: Karen Richardson, Beth Stalnaker, Melanie Caughey, Deb Swartz, Mary McCune, and many others that always made my job easier and smoother. Thank you also should go to a lot of friends I made in SSEL and WIMS. I also would like to thank my great teachers Michael Flynn, Dennis Sylvester, and David Wentzloff for all the things they taught me in circuit design. Thanks also to my entrepreneurship mentors Dr. Adriens and Dr. Faley who encouraged me to explore a great deal of the business side in Healthcare microsystems. During my stay in Ann Arbor, I was blessed with a lot of dear friends, whom I will never forget. In fact I wish to live in Ann Arbor because of them, but we are all leaving at some point. A deep gratitude goes to my two dearest friends in Ann Arbor Amjad Abo- jbara and Samer Kadous, who have been brothers to me. There are very few people on Earth like these great guys. A deep thanks to my best friends Ahmad Almuhtady, Ahmed AlSabbagh, Ahmed Hassan, Ahmed Mady, Ihab Ismael, Khaled Aljanaida, Mahmoud Azzouny, Amr Alaa, Mohamed El-Sayed, A. Mayhoub, Mousa Afaneh, and Mahmoud Elkasabi. It is very hard to express how all of them affected my life. After Allah – my Lord- there is no one worthy of thanks like my parents Mohamed and Laila, who have been always supportive and made life very comfortable for me. There is nothing to say to express my gratitude to my parents. I would sacrifice my life for them and what they have done for me. Thanks to my older brother Tarek who taught me a lot in life and has been also a great friend. Thanks to my younger brothers Osama, and Amr, and my sister Eman for their continuous encouragement. I save my last and greatest thanks to my dear wife Manar. I know she suffered a lot with me by leaving her parents and family in Egypt for the sake of supporting me without mentioning it or complaining about it. She has been a great wife, sister, mentor, and family for me and she will always be. Finally, I would like to thank my Lord Allah for all the blessings and bounties He has given me. I always pray that He makes me beneficial to all mankind and to accept my good deeds sincerely to Him. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................... xxi ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... xxii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................... 1 1.1 History of Electrical Recording of Brian Activity ..................................................... 2 1.2 Integrated Circuits and MEMS for Extracellular Recording ..................................... 6 1.3 Challenges and Trends of Neural Integrated Microsystems (NIMS) ...................... 21 1.3.1 User Segmentation ........................................................................................ 21 1.3.2 Challenges and Trends for Highly Complicated Neuroscientific Studies ..... 23 1.4 Research Objectives and Overview ......................................................................... 27 CHAPTER 2: CONSTRAINTS AND DESIGN OF AN ANALOG FRONT-END MODULE FOR HYBRID INTEGRATION WITH NEURAL PROBES ....................... 29 2.1 NIMS IC Requirements and Figures of Merit ......................................................... 30 2.1.1 Power Consumption Effect ........................................................................... 30 2.1.2 Integration and Area Consumption Effect ..................................................... 31 2.1.3 Figures of Merit for Neural Recording Integrated Circuits ........................... 32 2.2 A 0.9V Low-Power 16-Channels Modular Analog Front-End ................................ 37 2.3 A Sub-1μW Low-Noise Amplifier Operating in Moderate Inversion ..................... 40 2.3.1 A Review of Moderate Inversion Region and Operation Prospective .......... 40 v 2.3.2 Design of Moderate-Inversion Two-Stage OTA ........................................... 44 2.3.3 OTA Frequency Response Analysis: Gain, Phase, and Noise ...................... 46 2.3.4 Simulation Results ......................................................................................... 51 2.4 A 124nW Band-Pass Filter with 6-Bit Tunable Frequency Corners ....................... 53 2.5 Time-Division Multiplexing .................................................................................... 56 2.6 A 8.2μW 3-Bit Programmable Gain Amplifier for a 16:1 Time-Division Multiplexed Input..................................................................................................... 59 2.7 Asynchronous 320kS/s 9-Bit Successive Approximation Analog-to-Digital Converter with Rail-to-Rail Dynamic Comparator and Power-Scalable Sampling Operation.................................................................................................................. 62 2.7.1 The Overall Operation ................................................................................... 63 2.7.2 Track and Hold Circuit (THA) ...................................................................... 64 2.7.3 9-bit Capacitive DAC with a Compensation Capacitor ................................ 65 2.7.4 Dynamic Comparator with Rail-to-Rail Input-Common-Mode .................... 68 2.7.5 Asynchronous Logic and Interface ................................................................ 74 2.7.6 Parallel-to-Serial Converter and Data Acquisition ........................................ 75 2.7.7 Power Scalable Sampling Operation ............................................................. 76 2.8 Measurement Results and Performance Comparison for AHI-16 ........................... 77 2.8.1 Overall System Measurement ....................................................................... 77 2.8.2 Low-Noise Amplifier .................................................................................... 79 2.8.3 Band-Pass Filter ............................................................................................ 83 2.8.4 Programmable Gain Amplifier .....................................................................