Instrumentation amplifier and current injection circuit design for input impedance boosting in biopotential and bioimpedance measurements

This paper describes an instrumentation amplifier (IA) architecture with a mechanism that generates negative capacitances at its input. Two 8-bit programmable capacitors between the input stage and the current feedback loop of the IA allow adaptive cancellation of the input capacitances from the electrode cables and printed circuit board. The proposed negative capacitance generation technique can improve the input impedance from a few megaohms to above 500 MΩ without significant impact on performance parameters such as the common-mode rejection ratio, power supply rejection ratio, total harmonic distortion, and noise. Furthermore, a current injection circuit is introduced for on-chip input impedance estimation. An operational transconductance amplifier and associated key design concepts are presented in this paper that achieve a transconductance of 25 pS and an output impedance above 4 GΩ. The IA and the test current generator were designed and simulated using 0.13 µm CMOS technology.