Belgian research lab IMEC is unveiling a flexible organic ADC at ISSCC this week, and the fruits of other development programmes.
The analogue organic first-order continuous-time [delta-Sigma] ADC has been built on a flexible plastic substrate and achieves 26.5dB precision as well as a maximum clock speed of 500Hz.
Dual-gate devices have been used, and the circuit was designed using a Vt-insensitive design strategy appying high-pass filters for offset cancellation.
Consumption is 100μA from 15V, and the active area is 13x20mm.
A paper on organic circuits with dual-gate thin-film transistors will be presented by the Netherlands-based Holst Centre, a joint venture between IMEC and Dutch research organisation TNO.
"The difference between zero-Vgs-load and diode-load logic is studied and an optimised design for both is presented," said IMEC. "This design is used in 99-stage ring oscillators, to determine stage delays, and in 64bit RFID transponder chips yielding data rates of 4.3kbit/s."
Back with silicon semiconductors, IMEC has a paper on a wideband programmable analogue baseband beam-former for a four-antenna 60GHz phased-array receiver in 40nm digital CMOS.
"It is based on current amplifiers employing shunt feedback," said IMEC. "The phase shifter resolution is better than 20°, with a bandwidth of 1.7GHz and power consumption of 35mW. Input-referred noise current is 170nArms and output IP3 is -6dBV."
There is also a 30μW 2V analogue signal processor asic for EEG signal monitoring, from IMEC and Holst Centre.
In addition to the extracting the ECG signal, it includes an adaptive sampling scheme for data reduction, continuous-time electrode-tissue impedance monitoring for sensing motion artefacts, and band power extraction for beat detection.