HIPAA/D Converters for Biomedical Data Acquisition

We will achieve a high performance analog to digital conversion through the use of very efficientlow speed ADCs (analog to digital converters) which operate in parallel. Pre-amplification orde-multiplexing make this device ideal for low level multi-channel signal acquisition from grid arraysensors in the field of biology, optical sensing, and biomedical data acquisition in general. On chipcircuitry can accommodate tunable prefiltering to band limit the signal to be digitized. The approachrelies on combining hundreds of channels in single slope ADCs in a single IC. Numerous IC are stackedon a 3-D configuration described in the proposal. The number of ICs per stack is a variable, dependenton the application and conversion bandwidth desired. Simple stacks could contain greater than 1,000ADC channels operation in parallel. Even greater parallelism can be obtained by assembling the stackson a substrate, so that greater than 10,000 single slope ADCs can be made to operate in parallel in apackage approximately 2 cubic inches. The proposed Phase 1 program will focus on specificationgeneration, architecture development, and preliminary packaging design in order to determine feasibilityof producing a prototype in Phase II.