Low-voltage bulk-driven rectifier for biomedical applications

•We propose a novel and simple winner-take-all MOS structure based on bulk-driven technique.•The novel structure is suitable for low-voltage low-power applications.•The structure was designed with single voltage supply of 0.6 V and consumes about 2.14 µW.•Based on the proposed structure we present a half- and full-wave voltage rectifier.•The rectifiers are suitable for battery-powered implantable and wearable medical devices.

This paper introduces the novel design of a low-voltage low-power voltage rectifier based on bulk-driven (BD) winner-take-all (WTA) circuit. The proposed circuit is able to work as a half- or full-wave rectifier and it is specifically designed for battery-powered implantable and wearable medical devices. The main attractive features of the proposed circuit are topology simplicity, minimal number of transistors, accuracy and capability of rectifying signals with a relatively wide range of frequencies and amplitudes. The circuit was designed with single voltage supply of 0.6 V and consumes about 2.14 µW. Detailed simulations using TSMC 0.18 µm n-well CMOS technology were performed to prove the functionality and to fully characterize the circuit performance.