UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

DISSERTATION DEFENSE FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

by

Ondrej Novak
Advisor: Richard Brown

RF-Powered Mixed-Signal Microcontroller with Wireless Ultra Wideband Transmitter for Electrochemistry and Bio-Sensing

Miniature electronic microsystems have become a powerful enabling tool for advanced biomedical research. The diversity of biomedical research dictates that microsystems must be developed and customized specifically for each new application. For advanced long-term experiments on animals, a custom designed system-on-chip (SoC) is usually necessary to meet desired specifications. Custom SoCs, however, are often prohibitively expensive, preventing many new ideas from being explored.

We have developed a single-chip integrated microsystem that offers the most commonly used sensor interfaces, high computational power, and which requires minimum external components to operate. Included peripherals can also drive electrolysis or redox reactions. The SoC is highly modular and well suited for prototyping in- and ex-vivo experimental devices, eliminating the high cost of SoC development for each new application.

Additionally, the system includes a wireless ultra-wide band (UWB) transmitter. An investigation of the suitability of the UWB technology for neural recording systems is presented. Experimental data capturing the UWB signal transmission through an animal head is presented and a statistical model for large-scale signal fading is developed.

Wednesday, August 6, 2014
9:00 a.m.
Eccles Boardroom
Warnock Engineering Bldg (WEB)

The public is invited