Title: A new approach to design safe and reliable electrical stimulator

Authors: Sead Moradi; Esmaeel Maghsoudloo; Reza Lotfi

Addresses: Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL), Electrical Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad - 9177948974, Iran ' Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL), Electrical Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad - 9177948974, Iran ' Integrated Systems Laboratory (ISL), Electrical Engineering Department, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad - 9177948974, Iran

Abstract: In this paper, a new active charge-balancing technique for functional electrical stimulation is presented. In this method, electrode voltage is monitored after each stimulation period and a charge-balancing circuit keeps the electrode voltage in the safe range. Also, a dynamic comparator is utilised to reduce the total power consumption. This method is adopted in a micro-stimulator which is used in a functional electrical stimulation application. Simulation in a high-voltage 0.18 μm CMOS technology validates the feasibility of the approach and its low power consumption. The power consumption of the charge-balancing circuits contributes 3.4% of the overall power consumption of the system.

Keywords: active charge balancing; neural stimulators; functional electrical stimulation; CMOS technology; low-power design; safety; reliability; microstimulators; simulation; energy consumption; healthcare technology.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2014.064820

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2014 Vol.15 No.4, pp.305 - 316

Received: 20 Dec 2013
Accepted: 31 Mar 2014
Published online: 21 Oct 2014 *

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