A 6.3pJ/b 30Mbps -30dB SIR-tolerant Broadband Interference-Robust Human Body Communication Transceiver using Time Domain Signal-Interference Separation

Abstract

Human Body Communication (HBC) provides a low power communication medium for energy constrained wearable/ implantable devices in and around the human body. This paper presents a broadband HBC transceiver implemented in 65nm CMOS that achieves 6.3pJ/b energy efficiency at 30Mbps with -30dB interference-tolerance. Capacitive termination at the receiver end is used to achieve a wideband HBC channel, and Time Domain Signal-Interference Separation (TD-SIS) using Integrating DDR (I-DDR) receiver allows a tolerance of -30 dB Signal to Interference Ratio (SIR) with a BER <10-3. The transceiver achieves 18X improvement in energy-efficiency compared to the State-of-the-Art HBC transceivers while being simultaneously broadband (carrier-less, low-energy) and interference-robust. Such order-of-magnitude improvement in energy-efficiency and private communication through the human body may enable applications like closed-loop neuromodulation, health-monitoring, secure authentication among many others.