An Integrated Optical Transceiver Circuit for Power

Delivery and Bi-directional Data Communication in

a Medical Catheter Device
Alexander Frank, Jens Anders and Bart Kootte Jean Schleipen and Peter Jutte
Joachim Burghartz OSYPKA AG Philips Group Innovation, Research
IMS CHIPS Rheinfelden, Germany Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Institut für Mikroelektronik
Stuttgart, Germany
frank@ims-chips.de

Abstract—In this paper*, the realization of an optical compact catheter system, containing minimum discrete
transceiver circuit (OTC) integrated into a customized catheter components to allow for a compact form factor. To achieve
ESSCIRC 2022- IEEE 48th European Solid State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC) | 978-1-6654-8494-7/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ESSCIRC55480.2022.9911483

system is presented. The electronics at the distal end of the
catheter is located far away from the external bed-side unit and
is connected by an optical link to control its functions. By means
of light only, the optical link simultaneously delivers power and
establishes a bi-directional data communication. The optical
link consists of just a few components, i.e. a multi-mode fiber, a
blue LED, an external unit and the optical transceiver circuit.
The LED is located at the catheter tip and is used by the OTC to
operate as an optical transceiver and energy harvester. Several
circuit blocks are integrated into the OTC, to provide a
regulated voltage of 1.8 V at a maximum current of 2.1 mA. The
OTC establishes a communication with a speed of up to
15.6 kBits/s for receiving and 1.35 MBits/s for transmitting data.
Because of the small area and only less components to set up the
link at the sensor side, the optical link is very suitable for
application to the catheter system presented in this paper. The
concept can also be applied to other biomedical or industrial
sensor systems, where conventional approaches, using electrical
wiring, are unpractical.
Keywords—Bi-directional optical interface, transceiver,
biomedical applications, LED, energy harvesting, MRI compatible
I. INTRODUCTION
An ongoing trend in biomedical data acquisition is to read-
out and process signals as close as possible at the sensor side
using an integrated circuit. This avoids long distance sensor
signal transmission, resulting in better signal quality and in
some cases also helps to reduce the cable-count. A prominent
use case is given by biomedical catheter applications, where
electrophysiological signals are captured for health
monitoring or treatment. These systems are built up to be as
compact as possible and to have an integrated sensor in the
catheter tip to detect electrophysiological signals. An
integrated circuit is also placed in the catheter tip to directly
process the sensor signals. The application requires to have a
bi-directional data transmission, to send either digitized data
inside-out or configuration settings outside-in to adjust the
data acquisition. More importantly, power needs to be
delivered to the catheter tip. Conventional methods by hard-
wiring cables to the catheter tip are becoming more and more
challenging, as the catheter is miniaturized and the cable
count is limited. Radio frequency (RF) transmission is less
practical due to high losses in human tissue. Here, we present
a novel concept to simultaneously establish a bi-directional
communication and power transfer between a user and a
*
This work is part of the POSITION-II project funded by the ECSEL
Joint Undertaking (Ecsel-783132-Position-II-2017-IA) and BMBF
(16ESE0304).
978-1-6654-8494-7/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
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this, we have designed an optical transceiver chip (OTC)
embedded in the catheter tip. The OTC is connected to an
optical link, which consists of a blue LED, a multimode fiber
and the bed-side electro-optical unit. The optical link
simultaneously delivers power and transmits data by means
of light only. Furthermore, the used thin multimode fiber can
be easily integrated into a catheter and offers low loss of
signal quality and optical power. In addition, the optical link
could also be used in Magneto Resonance Imaging (MRI),
where long wires are not allowed to avoid high voltage
induction.
The paper is organized as follows: In Section II, the optical
link is described in detail. Next, in Sections III and IV, the
circuit implementation of the OTC, chip layout and system
integration are described. Finally, in Section V, the
experimental results are discussed.
II. OPTICAL LINK
The optical link is used to establish both power and data
transfer between a bed-side electro-optical unit and the
electronics inside a catheter tip (Figure 1). Both parts are
located several meters away and physically connected by a
multimode fiber, which guides optical light. The electronics
inside the catheter tip consists of a blue LED, an optical
transceiver circuit (OTC) integrated into a customized ASIC,
and capacitors. Inside the electro-optic unit, a semiconductor
laser generates light with a wavelength of 405 nm and optics
are mounted to couple the laser light into the fiber. The light
is passed to the distal end of the fiber and illuminates a blue
LED, which operates as a power receiver as well as a data
transmitter. The power delivery function is achieved by
relying on the photovoltaic effect, which converts the laser
Figure 1: Schematic of the optical link and its required components.
The optical transceiver stage is integrated into a sensor readout
circuit, which requires power and an interface for communication.
An electro-optical unit is used to drive the laser and to read-out the
received data.
185
power Plaser into electrical energy. The generated current
applies a voltage at the LED and supplies the OTC with
power. Meanwhile, the bi-directional data transmission
function is realized with the help of the physical effect called
photo-induced electroluminescence (PEL) [1]. It relies on the
fact that, if the resistance of a connected load is high enough,
the LED will generate a voltage higher than given by the
bandgap of the semiconductor and emits light without an
external current source back into the fiber. This can be used
to operate the LED as a data transmitter by simply modulating
the resistance of a connected load and, thus, emitting light
back into the fiber. The wavelength of the back-emitted light
must be distinguishable from the laser light. The blue InGaN
LED is a suitable candidate. It provides on one hand a high
bandgap of 2.8 eV, at which a theoretically voltage of 2.8 V
is achievable, and on the other hand an emission wavelength
of 450 nm [2]. The back-emitted light of the LED is separated
from the laser light using a dichroic mirror and directed to a
silicon photodiode to convert the modulated light into an
electrical signal. A transimpedance amplifier and a FPGA are
used afterwards to post-process the data [3].
A bi-directional data communication can be established by
using PEL and the photovoltaic effect. Data are sent from the
external electro-optical unit to the OTC by modulating the
laser power Plaser. As a consequence, the voltage drop VLED
across the LED will change and will be detectable by a
resistor divider n1. A logic "1" is transmitted, if Plaser is higher
than a reference and vice versa (Figure 2 (a)). In order to send
back data from the catheter tip to the electro-optical unit, the
LED's current ILED,min needs to be modulated, thereby
providing more or less power to emit light back into the fiber.
This can be done by sourcing an additional current Iload,TX,
thereby ensuring a constant load current IOTC. In this manner,
a logical "1" is sent by sourcing a higher current 2 x Iload,TX
and a logical "0" is sent by sourcing 1 x Iload,TX (Figure 2 (b)).
III. CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION
An overall schematic of the OTC is illustrated in Figure 3.
The schematic consists of all required on-chip units and off-
chip components, such as the blue LED, the capacitors and
the customized sensor readout circuit. With the help of the
off-chip components, the OTC can be used to deliver power
and to establish data transfer to the sensor readout circuit
simultaneously. The latter, in turn, is implemented closely to
the OTC on the same ASIC and requires a stabilized voltage
and enough current to run properly. In addition, the
customized sensor readout circuit uses the power-on-reset
(POR) function of the OTC to ensure a correct start-up
sequence.
The internal circuit parts of the OTC are built up with a low
drop-out linear regulator (LDO), a POR, a biasing circuit, a
logic block to manage transmission, a diode D1, a
programmable current source CS0, and a circuit RX to detect
the received data. As described in Section II, the blue LED is
used to act both, as an energy harvester and transceiver.
Therefore, the LED's anode is connected to the power input
of the OTC and passed to the circuit RX, D1 and CS0. Because
of the maximum voltage level is 2.8 V, these circuit blocks
and the LDO require to be built up with MOS devices
operating at a voltage higher than 2.8 V, i.e., 3 V MOS
devices are used, while the others as well as the customized
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Figure 2: Implementation of the optical bi-directional
communication. Data are received by changing the laser power and
measuring the voltage drop Vsense (a). Data are transmitted using n0
to change the total current ILED,min by Iload,TX (b).
circuit is using 1.8 V MOS devices. In the following sub-
sections, each circuit block and their related functions are
discussed in detail.
1) Energy Harvesting and Voltage regulation with LDO
An integrated linear low drop-out regulator, diode D1 and
capacitors are implemented to supply the sensor readout
circuit. In this example, the sensor readout circuit requires a
stabilized voltage of 1.8 V with a maximum current
consumption of 2.1 mA, which needs to be provided even
during data transmission. Because of the fact, that data are
transmitted by turning off and on the laser light, meaning a
varying input voltage VLED from 0 V to 2.8 V, the OTC's
voltage regulation circuit has to accommodate with a huge
input voltage range. A suitable way to ensure a stable output
voltage of 1.8 V was found by the following topology: If the
laser light is turned off for a short time, the diode D1 is used
to prevent current flow back to the LED. In addition, an
external capacitor C2,ext = 4.7 µF is added to buffer the input
voltage VIN,LDO and ensures stable operation condition above
the minimum designed input voltage of 2.0 V. If the laser
light is turned on, the voltage VLED of the LED requires to be
high enough despite of the loss, because of the diode's
forward voltage. A large PMOS transistor in diode
configuration is chosen to minimize that voltage. The
topology of the LDO is built up adopting a conventional
approach consisting of an error amplifier, PMOS transistor, a
bandgap circuit and an external capacitor C1,ext = 4.7 µF. The
latter is used to stabilize and to buffer the output voltage of
1.8 V
2) Data transmission proximal-to-distal
The transmitted data of the electro-optical unit are received
by using the circuit block RX of the OTC. As described in
section II, data are sent by turning on and off the laser light.
The voltage drop of VLED is sensed by the circuit RX and
further processed by the digital core. To do so, a
programmable resistor network n1 is implemented to sense
VLED, which divides the voltage VLED to a lower voltage Vsense
in order to fit to the 1.8 V MOS requirements. A Schmitt
Trigger comparator ST1 compares Vsense with a fixed reference
voltage Vref. In case the laser is turned off, VLED is lower than
Vref, which results to VRX = 0 V (or logical "0"). And vice
Figure 3:Schematic of the optical transceiver stage (OTC). A blue LED is connected to its input to deliver power and transmit data. Several
circuit block inside the OTC are used to process data transmission and ensures stable power to a sensor readout circuit.
versa, if VLED is higher than Vref, the laser is turned on and thus
VRX = 1.8 V ("1"). The decision result VRX is passed to the
logic unit of the OTC, where data are processed further. The
RX block is designed to receive data at maximum rate of
15.6 kBits/s. To adjust sensitivity and common-mode voltage
of ST1, the voltage divider n1 and n2 can be controlled
digitally.

3) Data transmission distal-to-proximal

Data are transmitted to the electro-optical unit by changing
the current flow Iload of source CS0. The amount of current
requires to be changeable during run-time and determines the
amount of back-emitted light into the fiber. Therefore, a
programmable current source functionality is implemented at
CS0, where the current Iload can be changed stepwise from Figure 4: Micrograph of the OTC. The circuit is connected to 3.0 V
0.13 mA to 1.92 mA (4-bit resolution). CS0 is built up using and 1.8 V pad rings. In addition, the OTC is designed to fit to the
area requirements of the customized circuit.
a conventional current mirror structure consisting of a binary
weighted NMOS devices. This is because of the benefit, that
a current source and the resulting current Iload isn't affected by
its input voltage. This allows to source a constant current Iload
even if the voltage VLED is varying. CS0 is designed to set the
current with a speed of up 1.35 MBits/s.

4) Clock recovery implementation

The OTC has integrated a logic block, which controls data
transmission and sets configuration registers of internal
circuit parts. Since the optical interface provides no electrical
connection between the electro-optical unit and OTC, both
parts are not clock synchronized and just assuming their
transmitter’s default frequency. Because of process
variations, the OTC's clock can differ in the range of
+/- 30 %. That means, that both parts require techniques to
recover the clock and data of a received input signal. For the
OTC, this is solved by oversampling signal VRX of up to 16
times and minimize the influence of process variations. A
speed of up to 15.6 kBits/s can be achieved, if using a clock
frequency of 1.35 MHz and PWM modulation. Same applies
for the electro-optical unit, where the transmitted data of the
OTC are oversampled by 100 MHz to recover the clock and
data.
IV. CIRCUIT LAYOUT AND SYSTEM INTEGRATION
The OTC is integrated into an ASIC placed in a catheter tip
for sensing electrophysiology signals inside the atrium of a
human heart. Figure 4 shows the chip micrograph with the
OTC block highlighted. The ASIC is realized in a 180 nm
CMOS technology and occupies an area of 0.07 mm². The
pads of the OTC are separated in such a way, that two
(a) (b)
Figure 5: (a) The customized ASIC with integrated OTC is placed
on top of a liquid polymere substrate. The capacitors and LED are
solderd close to the ASIC (LED is placed on the bottom of the LCP).
(b) The fiber is glued to the LED.
different types of pads with different voltage regimes are
used, either 3 V and 1.8 V. Moreover, the pitch of the pads is
chosen to ensure enough space for reliable gold bumping
connection.
The overall system ASIC is placed on top of a liquid crystal
polymer (LCP) substrate (Figure 5 (a)). Other components as
the LED and capacitors are soldered on the bottom and top
side of the LCP as closes as possible to the ASIC. The LCP
area of the LED is folded in such a way, that the fiber can be
glued horizontally (Figure 5 (b)).
V. MEASUREMENT SETUP AND RESULTS
The measurement setup is built up to test the performance of
the OTC and to show the functionality of the overall optical
link. The setup consists of an electro-optical unit, a PC to
control the measurement sequence and an oscilloscope to
record data (see Figure 6). As can be seen in Figure 7, the
optical power of the laser is ramped up to 25 mW (58 mW

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electrical power) and then held constant to give time to start-
up the ASIC (blue curve). If enough power is delivered to the
LED, the OTC begins to regulate to a supply voltage of
VDD = 1.8 V (green curve). As the next step, the customized
circuit automatically sends identifier packets by using the
OTC's transmission unit. The electro-optical unit is
configured to detect these identifier packets in order to
recognize a successfully start-up of the OTC (red curve).
Next, the OTC is ready to receive data. This can be done
between two identifier packets to avoid interferences. In this
example, data are sent to the OTC to change internal settings
of the customized circuit (see command "set register" and "set
current" in Figure 7). Finally, a command is sent, which starts
to perform measurement and the transmission of data with up
to 1.35 Mbit/s (called, burst mode; see red curve). At the
carried-out measurement, Iload was modulated between
0.13 mA (logical "0") and 1.17 mA (logical "1") to achieve
sufficient back-emitted optical power for a high signal
amplitude at the photodiode. A summary of selected
performance values is given in Table 1.

Table 1: Performance summary of the OTC

This work
Technology 180 nm CMOS Figure 6: Setup to perform optical measurements with the OTC.
Core Supply Voltage 3 V, 1.8 V
Circuit Area
0.07 mm²
(without pad area)
Type of Energy Harvesting optical
Required optical laser power 25 mW
Minimum input voltage 2.0 V
Supply output for load 1.8 V
Maximum current for load 2.1 mA
Speed of transmission < 1.35 Mbit/s
Speed of receiving < 15.6 kBit/s
On-Chip LDO yes
Power-on-Reset yes
Off-chip capacitors 2 x 4.7 µF

VI. CONCLUSION

In this paper, an optical transceiver circuit (OTC) integrated

into a customized ASIC residing in a catheter, is presented. It
uses a single optical fiber acting as optical link to provide
power and a communication interface simultaneously. A blue
LED is placed closed to the OTC and a fiber is glued to the
LED to transfer data and power by means of light only. The
concept is verfied by measurement results. The optical link as
well as the OTC are perfectly suited for applications, where
less space inside a catheter is available and a bi-directional
data transmission interface are required. Further
investigations will cover circuit techniques to eliminate the
use of external capacitors and tests inside an MRI system.
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to thank Cor Scherjon from IMS
CHIPS, Thorsten Göttsche, Benjamin Burg from OSYPKA
AG, Martin van der Mark, Martin Pekař, Anneke van
Dusschoten from Philips MEMS & Micro Devices.
Figure 7:Measurement results of a bi-directional communication
using the OTC and optical link.
References
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[2] M. B. van der Mark, A. van Dusschoten und M. Pekar,
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an efficient LED,“ in Optical Fibers and Sensors for
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ASIC and Optical Link,“ Mexico, 2021.

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