A Low-Power Portable ECG Touch Sensor with Two Dry Metal Contact Electrodes

This paper describes the development of a low-power electrocardiogram (ECG) touch sensor intended for the use with two dry metal electrodes. An equivalent ECG extraction circuit model encountered in a ground-free two-electrode configuration is investigated for an optimal sensor read-out circuit design criteria. From the equivalent circuit model, (1) maximum sensor resolution is derived based on the electrode's background thermal noise, which originates from high electrode-skin contact impedance, together with the input referred noise of instrumentation amplifier (IA), (2) 60 Hz electrostatic coupling from mains and motion artifact are also considered to determine minimum requirement of common mode rejection ratio (CMRR) and input impedance of IA. A dedicated ECG read-out front end incorporating chopping scheme is introduced to provide an input referred circuit noise of 1.3 mu V-rms over 0.5 Hz similar to 200 Hz, CMRR of IA > 100 dB, sensor resolution of 7 bits, and dissipating only 36 mu W. Together with 8 bits synchronous successive approximation register (SAR) ADC, the sensor IC chip is implemented in 0.18 mu m CMOS technology and integrated on a 5 cm x 8 cm PCB with two copper patterned electrodes. With the help of proposed touch sensor, ECG signal containing QRS complex and P, T waves are successfully extracted by simply touching the electrodes with two thumbs.