Towards a Self-Powered ECG and PPG Sensing Wearable Device

This paper presents a multifunctional sensor interface system-on-chip (SoC) for developing self-powered Electrocardiography (ECG) and Photoplethysmography (PPG) sensing wearable devices. The proposed SoC design consists of switch-capacitor-based LED driver and analog front-end (AFE) for PPG sensing, ECG sensing AFE, and power management unit for energy harvesting from Thermoelectric Generator (TEG), all integrated on a 2x2.5 mm(2) chip fabricated in 0.18-mu m standard CMOS process. We have performed post-layout simulation to verify the functionality and performance of the SoC. The LED driver employs the switch-capacitor-based architecture, which charges a storage capacitor up to 2.1 V and discharges accumulated charge to pass instantaneous current up to 40 mA through a selected LED. The PPG AFE converts the resulting photodiode (PD) current to voltage output with adjustable gain of 114-120 dB Omega and input-referred noise of 119 pAnsis within 0.4 Hz-10 kHz. The ECG AFE provides adjustable mid-band gain of 47-63 dB, low-cut frequency of 1.5-6.3 Hz, and input-referred noise of 7.83 mu V-RMS within 1.5 Hz-1.2 kHz to amplify/filter the recorded ECG signals. The power management unit is able to perform sufficient energy harvesting with the TEG output voltage as low as 350 mV.