A prototypical interface for deep brain stimulation

This paper presents a prototypical interface circuit for deep brain stimulation surgery. It provides four channel outputs with a stimulating current. This stimulating circuit adjusts its output current by utilizing the switched-capacitor DAC and voltage-to-current transconductance amplifiers with the power-down mode to achieve a higher resolution and to save the power dissipation. The biphasic stimulating waveform is generated using a bridge switching technique and the programmable pulse signals are adjustable for width and frequency. By fabricating with a standard 0.35-μm0.35-μm CMOS technology at a 3.3 V supply voltage, the reduced output stimulating current has 8-bit resolutions for amplitudes between 5μA and 155μA, 4-bit resolutions for frequencies between 126 Hz and 244 Hz, and 4-bit resolutions for time intervals between 0μs and 120μs.