13-14:30 Saturday 26 Dec. 2021
 

Abstract: Implantable neural electrical stimulators can be used to treat a variety of neurological disorders and/or restore some body functions such as DBS (Deep Brain Stimulation) for Parkinson disease, SCS (Spinal Cord Stimulation) for chronic pain, Cochlear Implants for stimulating cochlear nerves for inner hearing loss, Epiretinal prosthesis for treating retinal degenerative diseases, etc.  
The power efficiency and safety of the electrical stimulators are uncompromisable. Also, the characteristics of the stimulator such as the voltage compliance, and current/voltage resolution are among the design challenges defining the ASIC technology node. Some charge balancer circuits and systems to ensure the electrical stimulation safe for both the tissue and the electrode are presented. Multi-channel concurrent stimulation and generating different waveforms to increase the efficacy are also discussed. Different types of neural stimulation circuitries are introduced, and as an example, an energy efficient multichannel adiabatic switching-based stimulator with high driving current capability (up to 10 mA) is presented in more details. The stored energy in the electrode-tissue capacitor in the first phase of the stimulation will be mostly recovered in the second phase. The proposed stimulator consists of a dynamic differential power supply which makes the biphasic stimulation possible without the need of H-bridge.
 
Omid Shoaei (M'96) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from University of Tehran, Iran, in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree fromCarleton University, Ottawa, Ont., Canada, in 1996, all in Electrical Engineering.
              From December 1995 to February 2000, he was a Member of Technical Staff with Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Allentown, PA, where he was involved in the design of mixed analog/digital integrated circuits for LAN and Fast Ethernet systems. From February 2000 to March 2003, he was with Valence Semiconductor Inc., design center in Dubai, UAE, as director of the mixed-signal group, where he has been working on pipelined and delta-sigma analog-to-digital converters. From January 2008 to February 2012, he joined Qualcomm, San Diego, CA and worked as the chip lead and supervisor of a team of about 20 designers for two codec development projects for smart phone, and tablet OEMs. Since January 2014, he has been the principal investigator of the Deep Brain Stimulator (DBS) project supported by the Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Council, and currently working on the development of a new system and IC generation for DBS at the University of Tehran.
Dr. Shoaei has also been an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran since 1999. He has received 3 U.S. patents, and is the author or co-author of 2 book chapters and more than 180 international and national journal and conference publications. His research interests include biomedical integrated circuits and systems, analog-to-digital converters, precision analog/mixed-signal circuits and systems, and automotive electronics.