Bioimpedance spectroscopy consists of measuring the complex impedance of biological tissues over a large frequency domain. This method is particularly convenient for physiological studies or health monitoring systems. For a wide range of applications, devices need to be portable, wearable or even implantable. Next generation of bioimpedance sensing systems thus require to be implemented with power and resource savings in mind. Impedance measurement methods are divided into two main categories. Some are based on “single-tone” signals while the others use “multi-tone” signals. The firsts benefit from a very simple analysis that may consist of synchronous demodulation. However, due to necessary frequency sweep, the total measurement may take a long time. On the other hand, generating a multi-frequency signal allows the seconds to cover the whole frequency range simultaneously. This is at the cost of a more complex analysis algorithm. This makes both approaches hardly suitable for embedded applications. In this paper, we propose an intermediate approach that combines the speed of multi-tone systems with a low-resource analysis algorithm. This results in a minimal implementation using only adders and synchronous adc. For optimal performances, this small footprint digital processing can be synthesized and embedded on a mixed-mode integrated circuit together with the analog front-end. Moreover, the proposed implementation is easily scalable to fit an arbitrary frequency range. We also show that the resulting impact on noise sensitivity can be mitigated.

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Bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) is a technique increasingly used for measuring the electrical properties of biological tissues. Choosing an integrated system architecture for bioimpedance spectroscopy is very dependent on the application and ruled by several constraints such as precision, bandwidth and measurement time. This paper presents a hybrid architecture providing fast measurement time while maximizing precision. This new architecture has been defined for a wide exploration of electrical properties of biological tissues. It combines the frequency sweep and multitone measurement techniques. Using the multitone measurement over the α dispersion and a frequency sweep over the β dispersion, enable the system architect to overcome the design challenges faced when using each technique separately. Its critical blocks are optimized for a bandwidth up to 10 MHz, thus covering the α and β frequency ranges, an example of the design optimization is detailed for the current driver.

Abstract-On-chip sine-wave signal generation is widely covered by literature for Built-In-Self Test (BIST) or biosensor applications. The objective is to generate pure and robust sinewave signal with minimal hardware resources. An attractive solution consists in combining several digital signals to built this analog sine-wave. The objective of this paper is to give an analytical study of various potential solutions based on digitalbased approaches. Thanks to this study, we prove that technique consisting in setting the phase shifts and various amplitude values of the square-wave signals is the most efficient approach. Moreover, this study allows the selection of the best solution in terms of parameters of the square-wave signals to cancel loworder harmonics of the generated signal.