Integrated measurement circuits with low power consumption for ECG-application

In medical instrumentation the demand for small battery wearable measurement and control equipment is still growing. In the field of Electrocardiography 24 hour ECG recorders for medical applications and wireless pulse per minute measurement belts with watch displays for consumer applications are on the market. The discussed solution addresses high precision time measurement between ECG pulses. An integrated circuit was developed which measures the pulse duration with 12 bit resolution. The device includes preamplification, fully integrated bandpass filter, peak detector, time measurement unit and FSK modulator for wireless transmitter. The chip consumes 200 uA at 3.3 V supply and occupies an area of 2.1 mm2 on a 0.35 um CMOS DPTM Process with 0.5 mm2 core area only.