LAUSR

This article presents the first integrated somatosensory feedback system based on human body communication (HBC). The proposed wireless system, which is implemented using a 180-nm CMOS process, composed of a wrist device, a brain stimulator device (BSD), and an artificial mechanoreceptor, is designed to restore the sense of touch to a paralyzed hand through tactile sensing and neural stimulation. By utilizing the HBC technique, multiple highly efficient wireless links are realized through the low loss body channel. The self-interference tolerant mixer-first on–off keying (OOK) receiver (RX) achieves 71-dB self-interference rejection at −61-dBm input RF power, with an energy consumption of 36.4 pJ/bit and an area of 0.065 mm2. The temperature-stable, 0.17-mm2 injection locked relaxation oscillator-based frequency-shift keying (FSK) RX achieves an energy consumption of 60 pJ/bit at an input data-rate of 1.2 Mbps and an FSK level difference of 2.2 MHz. A reconfigurable power/FSK transmitter (TX) and a charge-balanced neural stimulator are also presented. The wireless system was demonstrated and verified on human body.