IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO.
7, JULY 2013
Measurement and Analysis of Current
Noise in Chopper Amplifiers
Jiawei Xu, Qinwen Fan, Student Member, IEEE, Johan H. Huijsing, Life Fellow, IEEE,
Chris Van Hoof, Member, IEEE, Refet Firat Yazicioglu, and Kofi A. A. Makinwa, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents a theoretical analysis and mea-
surements of the current noise of several chopper instrumentation
amplifiers, which demonstrate that the charge injection and clock
feed-through associated with the MOSFETs of the input chopper
give rise to significant input current and current noise. In combi-
nation with high source impedances, this “chopper noise” is con-
verted to voltage noise, which may then be a significant contributor
to the amplifier’s total input-referred voltage noise. Chopper noise
has a white power spectral density, whose magnitude is roughly
proportional to the chopping frequency. Design guidelines are pro-
posed to reduce chopper noise, as well as the use of a clock-boot-
strapped chopper, which generates significantly less noise than a
traditional chopper.
Index Terms—Charge injection, chopper amplifier, chopping,
current noise, high-impedance sensors, noise.
I. INTRODUCTION
C HOPPING [1] is a continuous-time technique in which
polarity-reversing switches, known as choppers, are
used to modulate amplifier offset and noise to a certain
chopping frequency, thus enabling the realization of precision
amplifiers with low voltage noise and low offset. As a result,
chopper amplifiers are often used in applications where pre-
cision signal conditioning is required, e.g., in smart sensors,
sensor interfaces, medical instruments and precision voltage
references [2]–[5].
In CMOS, the switches of a chopper are usually implemented
as MOSFETs. Although it is well known that the transient spikes
caused by the charge injection and clock feed-through of these
periodically switched devices will give rise to a net input cur-
rent [6], [7], not much is known about the associated current
noise. In [8], the current noise of a chopper amplifier was at-
tributed to the shot noise associated with this input current. In
[9], measurements of the current noise of a chopper amplifier are
described. Although the cause of this noise was not explained,
it was observed that the measured noise density was propor-
tional to the square root of the chopping frequency and was in
Manuscript received December 09, 2012; revised February 08, 2013;
accepted February 15, 2013. Date of publication April 03, 2013; date of current
version June 21, 2013. This paper was approved by Guest Editors Antonio
Liscidini and Doug Smith.
J. Xu is with IMEC/Holst Centre, 5656AE Eindhoven, The Netherlands
(e-mail: jiawei.xu@imec-nl.nl).
Q. Fan, J. H. Huijsing, and K. A. A. Makinwa are with the Delft University
of Technology, 5628CD Delft, The Netherlands.
C. Van Hoof and R. F. Yazicioglu are with IMEC, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSSC.2013.2253217
0018-9200/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
1575
the order of several tens of fA/sqrt(Hz). This is roughly a hun-
dred times higher than the current noise of conventional CMOS-
or JFET-input amplifiers [10]. Some commercially available
chopper amplifiers exhibit even higher current noise densities
( 100 fA/sqrt(Hz)) [12]–[14]. When used with high-impedance
sensors such as dry bio-potential electrodes, photodiodes and
piezoelectric sensors, this current noise will be converted into
voltage noise, which will then add to, and may even dominate,
the amplifier’s total input-referred voltage noise.
This paper presents the results of noise measurements on sev-
eral chopper amplifiers [15] and proposes a theory that explains
the behavior of the measured current noise, which we will refer
to as chopper noise in the remaining of this paper. The measure-
ments reveal that chopper noise has a white power spectral den-
sity (PSD) and is caused by the clock feed-through and charge
injection of the MOSFETs of the input chopper. To first order,
both the resulting input current and the PSD of the associated
current noise were observed to be linearly proportional to the
chopping frequency.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II presents an anal-
ysis of the sources of input current in chopper (instrumentation)
amplifiers, and discusses the possible causes of current noise.
Section III presents measurements of the current noise of three
different types of chopper amplifiers: one DC-coupled and two
AC-coupled amplifiers. Section IV presents the design and the
noise performance of a test-chip in which several different types
of input choppers were implemented. Section V presents some
guidelines for reducing chopper noise, and Section VI concludes
the paper.
II. INPUT CURRENT NOISE IN CHOPPER AMPLIFIERS
Fig. 1 shows the equivalent input circuit of a chopper ampli-
fier connected to a differential voltage source. The amplifier’s
noise is modeled by an input-referred voltage noise source
and an input-referred current noise source ,
while the amplifier itself is considered to be ideal and noiseless.
models the source resistances. The total input-referred
voltage noise can then be written as
(1)
The input bias current of a CMOS amplifier is usually quite
low (in the order of a few pA [10]) and is dominated by the gate
leakage current of the input transistors and the leakage current
of the ESD protection circuitry. The associated current noise
is mainly due to shot noise, and so is also quite low ( 1
fA/sqrt(Hz)) [10], [11]. Hence, the current noise of a CMOS
1576 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 7, JULY 2013

Fig. 1. Excess voltage noise due to the source impedance and input current
noise of a chopper amplifier.
Fig. 3. Periodic charge injection and associated transient current of an input
chopper switch.

Ideally, the transient current spikes caused by a pair of

Fig. 2. Charge injection and clock feed-through of the input chopper switches.
amplifier is usually a negligible contributor to its total input-
referred noise.
However, CMOS chopper amplifiers exhibit substantially
higher levels of current noise [12]–[14]. This excess noise must
therefore be related to the periodic switching of the MOSFET
switches of the input chopper. The rest of this section presents
an analysis of the major noise sources associated with this
activity.
A. Charge Injection and Clock Feed-Through
Charge injection and clock feed-through are well-known
error sources associated with MOSFET switches. In a chopper,
one pair of switches will be “on,” while the other is “off.” As
shown in Fig. 2, when a pair of NMOS switches is turned off,
their channel charge and some of the charge in their overlap
capacitance will be injected into the circuitry connected
to their drain and source terminals (modeled by the capacitors
and ) [16].
The total charge that is injected into the source (or
drain) circuit is given by (2), where and are the width and
length of the chopper switches, is the gate oxide capaci-
tance, is the overlap capacitance between gate and source
(drain), is the overdrive voltage, and is the clock swing:
chopper switches turning off should be compensated by the
charge required to turn on the other pair, leading to a net zero
input current. However, mismatch between the switches and
slight differences in their turn-on and turn-off times result in a
net input current with a typical magnitude of several tens of pA
[17]–[19]. This is much larger than the gate leakage currents of
the MOSFETs and the leakage currents of the ESD diodes. The
RHS of (3) may thus be regarded as an upper bound, especially
since the exact amount of input current will also depend on the
relative magnitudes of the capacitances and connected to
the chopper. From (3), the input current should be proportional
to the chopping frequency, which is in good agreement with the
measurements reported in [7].
B. Shot Noise Due to the MOSFETs Channel Charge
Shot noise is associated with the nonuniform flow of discrete
charge carriers in semiconductors. This noise has a white noise
spectrum, whose PSD is proportional to the average current
[20], [21]. Since the current spikes associated with the charge
injection of the MOSFETs in the periodically switched MOS-
FETs gives rise to a net input current, our hypothesis is that this
current will also be accompanied by shot noise [8]. The PSD
of this current noise should then be linearly dependent on the
average current through the chopper switches, as shown in
(4), where C is the electron charge. The average
noise density of this impulsive noise can then be expressed as
(4)
(5)
This indicates that the current noise PSD associated with
charge injection should also be linearly dependent on the
chopping frequency.

(2) C. KT/C Noise From the Clock Driver

This periodic charge injection and clock feed-through at the The clock driver circuit is another possible source of noise.
chopping frequency causes transient current spikes (Fig. 3), As shown in Fig. 4, it can be modeled as a resistance in
whose average value is given by series with the gate-source capacitance . Since this resistor
(and any other series resistance in the gate charging circuit) will
(3) generate thermal noise, the channel charge will fluctuate and
so a certain noise charge will be injected into the surrounding
XU et al.: MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF CURRENT NOISE IN CHOPPER AMPLIFIERS
Fig. 4. Periodical noise charge injection and associated noise current of an
input chopper switch.
Fig. 5. Input parasitic SC resistance of a chopper amplifier.
circuitry every time the MOSFET is turned off. The rms value
of this noise charge can be expressed as
As before, this periodically injected noise charge will give
rise to an average rms noise current of
Assuming that this impulsive noise is approximately white
and distributed over the fundamental interval between 0 and
, then its PSD is given by
This PSD is also a linear function of the chopping frequency.
D. Parasitic Switched-Capacitor (SC) Resistance
Due to the action of the input chopper, the amplifier’s input
parasitic capacitances will be charged and discharged by
the input voltage and give rise to a net DC current [6], [7]. As
shown in Fig. 5, this effect can be modeled by a switched-ca-
pacitor resistance at the amplifier’s input [22], [23]. This
resistance generates current noise in the same manner as a phys-
ical resistor [24]:
with
1577
TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF A TYPICAL MOSFET SWITCH AND THE CALCULATED
CURRENT NOISE VOLTAGE DENSITY CONTRIBUTION OF A CMOS CHOPPER
CONSISTING OF EIGHT MOSFETS ( C OR 298 K)
The resulting current noise PSD is again proportional to the
chopping frequency and to the input parasitic capac-
itance of the amplifier. Since the switched-capacitor re-
sistor is usually quite large (tens or even hundreds of ), the
magnitude of the current noise PSD is usually negligible.
E. Summary
The total chopper noise PSD is obtained by sum-
ming the contributions of all the above-mentioned current noise
sources. Table I shows the parameters of the MOSFET switches
(in an ON Semiconductor 0.5 m CMOS process) used in the
input chopper of a CMOS chopper instrumentation amplifier
(6)
[4]. Also shown is the calculated contribution of each noise
source assuming that eight of these transistors (four NMOS
and four PMOS) are used to realize the four complementary
switches of its input chopper. The results show that the total
current noise is dominated by the contribution of charge injec-
(7) tion, and so from (5), the chopper noise PSD should be linearly
proportional to the chopping frequency, which is in line with the
measurements reported in [9].
III. INPUT CURRENT NOISE MEASUREMENTS ON
CHOPPER AMPLIFIERS
(8) In this section, noise measurements on different types of
chopper instrumentation amplifiers are presented.
A. Conventional Chopper Modulated Instrumentation
Amplifier
Fig. 6 shows the setup used to measure the current noise of
a chopper instrumentation amplifier (IA) [4]. Its input chopper
consists of 4 complementary CMOS switches, whose character-
istics are shown in Table I. The IA is configured with a voltage
gain of 800 and a bandwidth of 200 Hz. Since it was intended
for biomedical applications, an internal DC-servo loop ensures
that the amplifier has a high-pass characteristic with a corner
frequency around 0.5 Hz.
(9) A low-noise input bias voltage, , is generated from a 3.3-V
battery. Two large series resistors ensure that the
amplifier’s current noise is the dominant contributor to its total
1578 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 7, JULY 2013

Fig. 7. Measured voltage gain of the chopper amplifier

Fig. 6. Current noise measurement of a chopper instrumentation amplifier. Fig. 8. Measured input-referred noise of the chopper amplifier.

input-referred noise, i.e., that (10) and (11) are satisfied [25] as The measured input-referred current noise PSD at various
follows: chopping frequencies is shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10. As pre-
dicted by (5), the PSD of this chopper noise is linearly propor-
(10) tional to . Fig. 11 shows that, the measured input current
noise density is independent of the value of source resistance,
(11)
as expected.
Fig. 12 shows the measured SC input impedance of the
The input current noise PSD can then be determined from
chopper amplifier at different chopping frequencies. The
(12), where is the measured output noise voltage, is
smallest input impedance is about 250 M , which corresponds
the amplifier’s voltage gain, and the amplifier’s voltage noise
to the highest chopping frequency of 16 kHz. Hence, the
and source resistance are known. Note that the thermal
maximum current noise density associated with this SC input
noise of the choppers’ on-resistance is included in the measured
impedance is only 8 fA/sqrt(Hz), which is negligible compared
:
to the measured total current noise density of 158 fA/sqrt(Hz)
at this chopping frequency.

(12) B. Chopper Amplifiers With Capacitive Feedback

Figs. 7 and 8 show the measured voltage gain and the
input-referred voltage noise density of the chopper in-
strumentation amplifier. These results were used to determine
the input-referred current noise density and confirm the proper
operation of the IA at the various chopping frequencies.
In an opamp, chopper noise will also cause significant ex-
cess voltage noise when the input chopper is located at a high-
impedance internal node. For example, consider the inverting
opamp shown in Fig. 13, which is intended for biopotential
measurements [26]. The amplifier employs a coupling capac-
itor C to block the input DC offset, while using a pseudo re-
XU et al.: MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF CURRENT NOISE IN CHOPPER AMPLIFIERS 1579

Fig. 9. Measured input current noise PSD of the chopper amplifier.

Fig. 12. Measured SC input impedance of the chopper amplifier.

Fig. 13. Inverting capacitively coupled chopper amplifier (CCOPA).

Fig. 10. Input current noise PSD versus chopping frequencies.

Fig. 14. Measured and simulated input referred noise of inverting CCOPA
without chopping.

Fig. 11. Measured input noise current density with different source 0.18- m process and its input chopper consists of four NMOS
resistors kHz .
devices .
Due to the presence of C in the feedback path, the excess
sistor and a capacitor C in the feedback path to define its voltage noise PSD exhibits a spectrum (with a pole at
voltage gain and establish a high-pass corner at about 0.5 Hz. As ), which is given by
a result, the amplifier’s virtual ground is a high-impedance node,
which converts chopper noise into significant amounts of ex-
(13)
cess voltage noise. The amplifier was implemented in a TSMC
1580
Fig. 15. Measured and simulated input referred voltage noise of inverting CCOPA at variable chopping frequencies.
Fig. 16. Non-inverting capacitively coupled chopper amplifier (CCOPA).
With chopping disabled, the current noise is quite low, and so
any noise is buried in noise. This has been verified by
periodic noise simulations and measurements (Fig. 14). As can
be seen, the simulation results match the measurement results
well.
With chopping enabled, however, the ensuing chopper noise
results in excess voltage noise, which dominates the
amplifier’s noise performance (Fig. 15). In order to simulate
the effect of chopper noise, a current noise source at the
high-impedance chopping node (Fig. 13) was added. As shown
in Fig. 15, its magnitude was then adjusted to fit the measure-
ments obtained at different chopping frequencies. The resulting
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 7, JULY 2013
Fig. 17. Measured and simulated input referred voltage noise of non-inverting
CCOPA without chopping.
current noise densities ranged from 7.5 fA/sqrt(Hz) at 500 Hz
to 21 fA/sqrt(Hz) at 5 kHz, and in line with (5), are roughly
proportional to the square root of the chopping frequency.
A similar effect occurs in the non-inverting opamp shown
in Fig. 16, which was also implemented in a TSMC 0.18- m
process [27]. The amplifier employs a CMOS chopper with
equally sized PMOS and NMOS devices .
With chopping disabled, the amplifier’s noise is dom-
inant and the measured noise is in good agreement with
simulations (Fig. 17). With chopping enabled, noise
becomes dominant since the amplifier’s inverting input is a
XU et al.: MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF CURRENT NOISE IN CHOPPER AMPLIFIERS 1581

Fig. 18. Measured and simulated input referred voltage noise of non-inverting CCOPA at variable chopping frequencies.

high-impedance node. The measured noise corresponds to a

current noise density that ranges from 12 fA/sqrt(Hz) at 500 Hz
to 32.5 fA/sqrt(Hz) at 5 kHz, as shown in Fig. 18. As before,
the current noise density is roughly proportional to the square
root of the chopping frequency. In this design, the feedback
capacitors were much larger (16 ) than those in the inverting
amplifier, and so although the corner is still dominant, its
corner frequency is significantly lower.

IV. A DEDICATED NOISE-TESTING CHIP

In order to investigate the relationship between chopper
noise, charge injection and clock feed-through, a dedicated
noise-testing chip was implemented in a standard 0.18- m
CMOS process (Fig. 19). The chip consists of four chopper
IAs, similar to the one described in [4], but each equipped
with four different types of input chopper (Fig. 20): an NMOS
chopper, an NMOS chopper with dummy switches, a CMOS Fig. 19. Chip photograph of the noise-testing chip.

chopper, and a bootstrapped NMOS chopper with a low-swing

chopper clock. The NMOS chopper was used as a reference,
while the other three types of chopper represent various known
methods of reducing charge rejection and clock feed-through
errors [1], [28].
As in [28], the bootstrapped NMOS chopper uses a ca-
pacitively coupled clock driver to ensure that the MOSFETs
are driven at a constant overdrive voltage that is independent
of input CM variations. This can also be achieved with the
switched-capacitor scheme proposed in [29]. The coupling
capacitors and the chopping clock amplitude are chosen such
that the amplitude of the resulting is reduced by a factor of
2. To maintain the amplifier’s high input impedance, a voltage
follower is used to buffer the input CM voltage and supply the
current spikes required by the clock drivers [29].
The current noise PSD of the reference NMOS chopper
shows the expected linear relation with the chopping frequency
(Fig. 21). The current noise PSD produced by the four input
choppers is compared in Fig. 22. It is interesting to note that
both the CMOS chopper and the NMOS chopper with dummy
switches generate more current noise than the reference NMOS
chopper, while the bootstrapped NMOS chopper generates the
lowest current noise. The reason for this is that chopper noise
1582
Fig. 20. Four types of input chopper switches: (a) NMOS, (b) NMOS with dummy switches, (c) CMOS, (d) NMOS with bootstrapped clock drivers.
Fig. 21. Current noise PSD comparison of NMOS chopper amplifiers at var-
ious chopping frequencies.
is related to the charge injection, and hence the shot noise,
associated with the individual chopper switches. As such it
cannot be canceled by using dummy or complementary MOS-
FETs. In fact, the use of additional MOSFETs only increases
the total amount of charge injection and hence the total amount
of current noise. However, the bootstrapped NMOS chopper is
driven by a low-swing clock, which reduces its charge injection
and thus leads to less current noise.
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 7, JULY 2013
Fig. 22. Current noise PSD comparison of four chopper amplifiers
kHz .
As shown in Fig. 23, all the alternative chopper architectures
do reduce the amplifier’s DC input current to various degrees.
Apparently, the charge injection of the main NMOS switches
can be significantly reduced by a low-swing clock driver, and ef-
fectively canceled by the use of simultaneously clocked PMOS
or dummy switches, thus leading to lower input currents. As ex-
pected from (3), the input current of all four chopper amplifiers
increases monotonically with .
XU et al.: MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS OF CURRENT NOISE IN CHOPPER AMPLIFIERS
Fig. 23. Input current comparison of four chopper amplifiers.
V. METHODS OF REDUCING CURRENT NOISE
From the measurements on the noise-testing chip, reducing
the charge injection associated with the individual chopper
switches is the best way to reduce chopper noise. This obser-
vation suggests the use of minimum-size NMOS or PMOS
switches (subject to on-resistance considerations), the lowest
possible chopping frequency (subject to noise considera-
tions) and the use of a low-swing clock driver (again subject
to on-resistance considerations). In this paper, we propose
the use of a bootstrapped clock driver that uses a constant
overdrive voltage to drive the MOSFETs of the input chopper.
In some cases, it may be possible to simply avoid chopping at
high impedance nodes. In a chopper amplifier with capacitive
feedback, for instance, the input chopper can be located at the
output, rather than at the input, of the input stage. This will
eliminate the excess voltage noise caused by chopper
noise. Although the input stage’s noise will now not be
chopped, its effect can be somewhat reduced by increasing the
size of the input MOSFETs.
VI. CONCLUSION
The paper presents a theoretical analysis and experimental
verification of the current noise generated by chopper ampli-
fiers. This current noise is associated with the charge injection
of the input chopper’s MOSFET switches, which, in turn, gives
rise to a net input current and, we hypothesize, to shot noise.
The resulting chopper noise has a white noise spectrum and its
PSD is roughly linearly proportional to the chopping frequency.
When chopping is performed at high-impedance nodes, e.g., in
instrumentation amplifiers with capacitive feedback networks,
chopper noise can cause significant amounts of voltage noise,
which may then dominate the amplifier’s overall noise perfor-
mance. The use of a bootstrapped clock driver, which drives the
input chopper’s MOSFETs with reduced overdrive voltages, is
shown to significantly reduce chopper noise.
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Jiawei Xu received the M.Sc. degree in micro-
electronics from Delft University of Technology,
Delft, The Netherlands, in 2006. He is currently
pursuing the Ph.D. degree at the Delft University of
Technology.
After the M.Sc. degree, he started as a Researcher
on analog IC design at the imec/Holst Centre in
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where he worked on
low-power readout circuits for smart sensors. He
is currently working on low-power biopotential
readout circuits.
Qinwen Fan (S’10) was born in Inner Mongolia,
China. She received the B.Sc. degree in electronics
science and technology from Nankai University,
Tianjin, China, in 2006 and the M.Sc. degree in mi-
croelectronics from Delft University of Technology
(cum laude), Delft, Netherlands, in 2008. She is
currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree at TU Delft.
From August 2007 to August 2008, she was an in-
tern at NXP Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, The
Netherlands, where she worked on a precision instru-
mentation amplifier for biomedical purposes. In Oc-
tober 2012, she joined Maxim integrated in Delft, The Netherlands. Her research
interests include precision analog amplifiers, biomedical interface circuits, and
mixed-signal integrated circuits.
Johan H. Huijsing (SM’81–F’97–LF’10) was born
on May 21, 1938. He received the M.Sc. degree in
electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the
Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Nether-
lands, in 1969 and 1981, respectively.
He has been an Assistant and Associate Professor
in Electronic Instrumentation at the Faculty of Elec-
trical Engineering, Delft University of Technology,
since 1969. He became a Full Professor in the chair
of Electronic Instrumentation in 1990, and Professor
Emeritus since 2003. From 1982 through 1983, he
was a Senior Scientist at Philips Research Labs., Sunnyvale, CA, USA. From
1983 until 2005, he was a Consultant for Philips Semiconductors, Sunnyvale,
CA, USA, and since 1998 also a consultant for Maxim, Sunnyvale, CA, USA.
The research work of Johan Huijsing is focused on operational amplifiers,
analog-to-digital converters and integrated smart sensors. He has supervised
30 Ph.D. students. He is author or coauthor of more than 300 scientific papers,
40 U.S. patents and 15 books. In 1992 he initiated the international Workshop
on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. He co-organized it yearly until 2003.
Prof. Huijsing has been a member of the programme committee of the Euro-
pean Solid-State Circuits Conference from 1992 until 2002. He was chairman
of the Dutch STW Platform on Sensor Technology and of the biannual national
Workshop on Sensor Technology from 1991 until 2002. He was awarded the
title of Simon Stevin Meester by the Dutch Technology Foundation.
IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 48, NO. 7, JULY 2013
Chris Van Hoof (M’87) received the Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering from the University of Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium, in 1992.
Since 1992, he has been with IMEC, Leuven. He
is currently the Director of Heterogeneous Integrated
Microsystems and the Director of the HUMAN++
healthcare program at IMEC in Leuven and at the
Holst Centre, a collaboration between imec and TNO
in Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
His work focuses on wearable healthcare and its
enabling ultra low-power design and technology,
smart sensors and imagers, and heterogeneous integration. He has a track
record of 20 years of initiating, executing, and leading R&D contracts with
industry, and among others, he delivered space-qualified flight hardware to
two cornerstone European Space Agency missions. He has published over 500
papers and given 40 invited talks or keynotes.
Refet Firat Yazicioglu received the Ph.D. degree in
electronics engineering from Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, in 2008 in collaboration
with imec, Belgium.
He is currently working at imec, Belgium as R&D
Team Leader, where he is leading the “Biomedical
Integrated Circuits” team focusing on analog and
mixed signal integrated circuit design for biomedical
applications. During his research, he has (co)au-
thored over 50 publications, three book chapters,
and a book on ultra-low-power circuit and system
design for biomedical applications, and authored several patents in this field.
He has developed several generations of integrated circuits for wearable and
implantable healthcare applications.
Dr. Yazicioglu is the corecepient of Best Paper Award in Biomedical Circuits
and System Conference 2011, Smart Systems Integration Conference, 2008, and
Sensors & Transducers Journal 2008. He serves in the technical program com-
mittees of European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) and Interna-
tional Solid-State Circuit Conference (ISSCC). He is also co-chair of Biomed-
ical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS) 2013 in Rotterdam.
Kofi A. A. Makinwa (M’97–SM’05–F’11) received
the B.Sc. (First Class Honsors) and M.Sc. degrees
from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria,
in 1985 and 1988, respectively, the M.E.E. degree
(cum laude) from the Philips International Institute,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, and the Ph.D. degree
from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The
Netherlands, in 1989 and 2004, respectively.
He is currently an Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
Professor with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Computer Science and Mathematics, Delft Uni-
versity of Technology, which he joined in 1999. From 1989 to 1999, he was
a Research Scientist with Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, where
he worked on interactive displays and digital recording systems. His current
research interests include the design of precision analog circuitry, sigma-delta
modulators, smart sensors, and sensor interfaces. This has led to four books, 18
patents and over 170 technical papers.
Prof. Makinwa is on the Program Committees of the European Solid-State
Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) and the Advances in Analog Circuit Design
(AACD) Workshop. From 2006 to 2012, he was on the Program Committee of
the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). He has been a Guest
Editor of the IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS (JSSC) and a Distin-
guished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society (2008 to 2011). For
his doctoral research, he was awarded the 2005 Simon Stevin Gezel Award from
the Dutch Technology Foundation. He is also a corecipient of several best paper
awards: from the JSSC, ISSCC, ESSCIRC and Transducers, among others. He
is an alumnus of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences and an Elected Member of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits So-
ciety AdCom, the society’s governing board.