A 0.3-V, 2.4-nW, and 100-Hz fourth-order LPF for ECG signal processing

Abstract

An ultra-low voltage, low power bulk-driven voltage follower (VF) is proposed in this paper. Further, it is exploited to design a fourth-order low-pass filter (LPF) for electrocardiogram (ECG) signal processing. The filter is designed in UMC 180-nm CMOS technology and operates with an ultra-low supply voltage of 0.3 V. It consumes an extremely low power of 2.4 nW for a cutoff frequency of 100 Hz. Results of post-layout simulation show that the proposed filter provides a dynamic range (DR) of 51.6 dB even from a 0.3-V supply voltage. The filter achieves a Figure-of-merit (FoM) of 4.7 × 10−15, which is better than many designs listed in the literature. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.