An Optically Powered CMOS Receiver System for Intravascular Magnetic Resonance Applications

Description:

This paper presents a low-power optically powered receiver system designed in 0.18 μm triple well UMC complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Optical transmission is used for both power delivery and signal transmission. The power of the whole system can be supplied in two different configurations, namely continuous and intermittent mode configurations. In the continuous mode configuration, the optical power of a 650-nm laser source is received and delivered to the electronic circuits by a set of on-chip CMOS photodiodes. In the intermittent mode configuration, a low voltage DC-DC converter is used to boost a single on-chip CMOS photodiode voltage of 0.65 V up to 1.8 V. Additionally, in this configuration, optical switching is used for charging and discharging of a storage capacitor to obtain currents in milliampere range for the proper operation.