International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics

Volume 117 No. 19 2017, 147-153

ISSN: 1311-8080 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-3395 (on-line version)
url: http://www.ijpam.eu
Special Issue
ijpam.eu

   

A 0.5V BULK-DRIVEN OPERATIONAL TRANS CONDUCTANCE AMPLIFIER FOR DETECTING QRS

COMPLEX IN ECG SIGNAL
1
M. Kiran Kumar, Student Member, IEEE, 2FazalNoorbasha, Member,IEEE
1
Research Scholar, 2Associate Professor, ECE, K L University, Guntur, A.P

Abstract: An effective current scaling method with
source degenerated resistors proposed in the design of
Bulk-Driven Folded-Cascode (BDFC) amplifier. The
transconductance of the amplifier significantly vary with
the common mode voltage. A 0.5V efficient Band Pass
Filter (BPF) using bulk driven Operational Trans
conductance amplifier (OTA) is designed for detection
of QRS complex in ECG signal 17Hz. A low voltage
bulk-driven OTA with the proposed current scaling
technique has been implemented in a Standard
UMC180nm CMOS technology. The OTA consumes
620nW from a 500-mV supply voltage. The measured dc
gain is 58.4dB and the 3 dB bandwidth is 282.16 KHz
when the OTA is loaded with 1 pF.
Keywords: Bulk-Driven, transconductance, current
scaling, Band pass filter
with respect to the total supply voltage. The effective
way to increase the input common mode voltage is to
apply the input signal to the bulk terminals of the
differential pairs and gate terminals are appropriate with
bias voltages.
The important application of the amplifier is at active
filter designs. A filter is a circuit which is frequency-
subtle; it transmits signals with selected frequencies.
Active filters require power to operate. The main
advantage of passive filters over active filters is it not
require power to operate.A Band Pass filter is a device
that passes frequencies within a certain range and rejects
(attenuates) frequencies outside that range. The features
of ECG signal can be identified using QRS Complex
which shown in Figure 1 and 2.

1. Introduction Band Pass  
ECG Signal      QRS Complex
Low power operating conditions are stringent in case of Filter 
portable applications. Such as below 0.8V operated
portable systems [5], for such cases current and the
voltage drops across the circuit should be minimized. Figure.1. Block diagram of the Band Pass Filter
This can be possible if we accommodate weak inversion
regions of advanced VLSI technologies. Depletion of Band-pass filter was designed by a low pass and a high
power utilization in movable applications has made pass filter in cascade, in order to reduce the influence
lower supply voltages increasingly scale down to 0.8V interference signal noise and DC potential noise
for a single battery cell. Various approaches to ultra-low generated at electrodes. Figure 2 shows the bandwidth of
voltage supply circuit design have recently been QRS complex of ECG signal.
described; e.g., based on charge pumps [1], bulk drive
[2] [3], and floating gates limited common-mode range
input circuits. In these state amplifiers require unique
circuit architectures to improve the dynamic range under
the low supply voltages further the supply current of the
amplifier should be reduced to improve the battery life
of the device by selecting weak inversion regions [6].
One of the main analog building block in the design of
band pass filter is operational amplifier. The
conventional rail to rail operational amplifier is designed
by connecting in parallel a p-channel or n-channel
differential pair. But this will work properly at saturation
levels only because of high value of threshold voltage Figure. 2. ECG Waveform

  

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VDD 
inversion, K is the Boltzmann constant, q the charge of
the electron or hole.

Mb2  Mb1  M M VDD 

M
Mb2 
I V M Mb1  M12 M11

M M V
V
M10
Vb M9
V IB  Vb
V0 
M M
M M V1 M1  M2 V2 

Mb3  M7 M8
Vb
M
Mb3 
M
M5
M6
R1 R2 R3

V
VSS

Figure. 4. Schematic of Standard Folded-Cascode OTA

Figure. 3 Schematic of Low voltage Bulk-Driven used in with Gate Input
the design of Band Pass filter
exp 1 exp
2. Proposed Bulk-Driven Ota With A Current (2)
Scaling Technique
The current scaling technique is implemented by the
The circuit of bulk driven input is similar to the gate transistors M5 – M8. Transistors Mb1, Mb2, Mb3 form a
driven input; the input signal is applied to the bulk current mirror to deliver the differential currents to the
terminal of the transistor and gate is biased to form a output stage for voltage to current conversion.
channel between the source and the drain. The Transistors M1-M12 operated in weak inversion region
equivalent trans conductance ( ) of the amplifier is the with appropriate W/L ratio.
sum of individual transistor trans conductance. For a
A.Small Signal Analysis
bulk-driven input stage, depends on the bulk trans
conductance of the input pair. Compared with its gate-
driven counterpart, a bulk-driven opamp has a lower
gain and higher bandwidth because the bulk trans
conductance ( ).of an input device is much smaller
than its gate trans conductance ( ). Bulk trans
conductance can be expressed as
( (  
(1)
 
In the input stage from figure 3, the weak physiological
signal is applied to the bulks of input pair M1 and M2
and the gates are connected to ground then the M1 and
M2 in the weak inversion region. The drain to source
current (2)in weak inversion region depends on
reverse saturation current , T is the ambient
temperature, n is the inclination of the curve in weak Figure. 5 Small signal analysis of proposed folded OTA
  

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The equivalent circuit of a folded cascode CMOS OTA
to determine voltage gain with respect to input voltage is
as follows. Figure 5 shows the equivalent circuit of
operational transconductance amplifier where the input
signal Vi is given at bulk terminals of the input
differential pair of transistor. That is, for the bulk of M1
and M2. To inflate gain with body effect, the bulk
terminals ofM3 and M4 are connected to the power
supply VDD, whereas those terminals of M5 and M6 to
the power supply –VSS. The capacitances C1, C2
represent the total node capacitances at the drains of M3,
M5 and M9 respectively. Whereas , are the
trans conductance of M1 and M5 respectively.
are the transconductance of M7 and M9
respectively.
The overall DC small-signal differential gain is
) (3)
(4)
The schematic of low power bulk driven OTA is shown
in the Figure 3 it is a modified version of the folded
cascade topology shown in Figure 4. The current which
flows in the folded branch transistors is a small fraction
of the current in the input differential pair transistors
B. Current Scaling
Current scaling is done by increasing the output
impedances and thereby ensuring current scaling. The
source degenerated current mirrors are formed by
transistors M5 and M6 and resistors R2 and R3 set the
currents in M7 and M8such a way that the difference
between the currents in M3 and M4 and the current in
M5 and M6are a small portion of the currents in M1 and
M2. In order to save the power in bias circuit the current
scaling ratio between Mb1 and Mb2 is 7:1(2IB/14) as
shown in Figure 3. To set the currents in the folded
branch transistors to be IB/7, this is 1/3rd of the
differential input pair current. We set the current in M5
and M6 to be 8IB/7. Such current ratios are achieved
with resistors R2 and R3 and the ratio of R1 and R2 or
R3 is 1:50.
3. Design Of Band Pass Filter
Band Pass filter is designed to detect the QRS complexes
in the ECG signal. The circuit is designed with a fully
differential folded cascode OTA using Cadence
UMC180nm Process
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Special Issue
C1 R3
R1 
Vin
C2 Vout
R2
, Fig. 6 Multiple feedback Band pass Filter
The Band pass filter for the QRS detection reduces noise
in the ECG signal by matching the spectrum of the
average QRS complex. Without diagnose the original
QRS frequency band is used for the recognition of the
QRS complexes, an estimate of QRS complex spectra
suggested that the passband which maximizes the QRS
energy is approximately 5-25Hz” [7].
A. Multiple Feedback Band Pass Filter
Various interferences and noise are induced
when measuring ECG and EEG signals because of their
availability at low frequencies, a bandwidth of 0.1 to
150Hz. This filter allows the required ECG QRS
complex which is having the bandwidth of 16.5-17.5Hz
as per specification and it limits the bandwidth which
contains the interference signals and noise while
measuring ECG, such as DC potentials arising at the
electrode. The Multiple Feedback Band pass Filter is
typically limited to biomedical applications. The
performance of the Multiple Feedback Band pass Filter
circuit depends mainly on the op-amp employed. The
Gain Bandwidth product of the device should be well
excess of the resonant frequency multiplied by the
resonant gain.
Gain Bandwidth>>βfβ (5)
The band-pass or band-stop (notch) filter can easily
obtain by connecting the low-pass and high-pass filter
together.
The Transfer function of the proposed filter is given as:
(6)
The two poles are
International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics Special Issue

   

,
1 1

2
1 1
4
1  
2

Center frequency (fc): Figure. 9 Frequency response of filter design

(7)
Center Frequency f 17.062 Hz 
The center frequency is measured by the square root of
f f ∗f  

Band Width = f -f

Where:
 is the center frequency
 is the lower cut-off frequency
 is the upper cut-off frequency
product of corner frequencies and bandwidth is the
difference between two -3dB frequencies that is the The differential gain and common mode gain of OTA
difference between the upper and the lower cut-off is given in Figure 7 and 8with 282.16 KHz of
points Bandwidth and 58.4db gain.

Figure. 7 Differential Gain 58.4dB and BW=282.16 KHz 4. Measurement Results

The QRS Complex being detected by 17Hz Multiple

Feedback Band pass filter circuit with the help of the
OTA for Bio-signals (ECG) is designed for identifying
the cardiac Arrhythmias.

Table 1: Design Summary Of OTA

Figure. 8 Common mode Gain -29.5dB Current Division Ratio’s

Mb1:Mb2 7:1(2IB/14)
M1:M2, M3:M4 7IB/14
Figure 9 shows the output waveforms of the Multiple M5:M6 9IB/14
Feedback Band pass Filter design. The QRS complex of M7:M8, M9:M10, M11:M12 IB/7
17Hz signal is filtered out from the applied input signal

  

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TABLE 2: DESIGN SUMMARY OF FILTER efficient Band Pass Filter (BPF) is designed for detection
CIRCUIT of QRS complex in ECG signal with the center
frequency of 17Hz. The amplifier has a DC gain of
Parameter Specifications Measured value 58.4dB with 1 pF load and 282.16KHz 3dB bandwidth.
Center Frequency 17hz 17.058hz
Low cut-off Frequency 16.5hz 16.414hz Acknowledgements
High cut-off frequency 17.5hz 17.91hz
The authors deeply express their gratitude to ALRC
Table 3: Operating Points For Transistors In The OTA Research Centre, Department of ECE, K L
University and DST through ECR/2016/000569,
Devices W(um)/L(nm) ID Operating Region FIST SR/FST/ETI-316/2012 and EEQ
M1:M2 20/180 393nA Sub threshold /2016/000604.
M3:M4 50/180 393nA Sub threshold
M5:M6 10.02/200 505nA Sub threshold References
M7:M8 1/180 112nA Sub threshold
M9:M10 1/180 112nA Sub threshold
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