A wideband, CMOS current driver for bioimpedance measurement applications has been designed employing nonlinear feedback. With the introduction of phase compensation, the circuit is able to operate at frequencies higher than the pole frequency of the output transconductor with minimum phase delay. Moreover, it isolates the poles required for stability from the high frequency characteristics of the output transconductor. The circuit has been developed in a 0.35-μm CMOS technology. It operates from ±2.5 V power supplies and can deliver multifrequency (multisine) currents to the load. Simulation results show that for a 1 mAp-p output current, the phase delay is below 1 o for frequencies up to 3 MHz, rising to 1.5 o at 5 MHz.I.

This paper describes an alternative sinusoidal current driver suitable for bioimpedance applications where high frequency operation is required. The circuit is based on a transconductor and provides current outputs with low phase error for frequencies around its pole frequency. This extends the upper frequency operational limit of the current driver. Multifrequency currents can be generated where each individual frequency is phase corrected. Analysis of the circuit is presented together with simulation and experimental results which demonstrate the proof of concept for both single and dual frequency current drivers. Measurements on a discrete test version of the circuit demonstrate a phase reduction from 25° to 4° at 3 MHz for 2 mAp-p output current. The output impedance of the current driver is essentially constant at about 1.1 M Ω over a frequency range of 100 kHz to 5 MHz due to the introduction of the phase compensation. The compensation provides a bandwidth increase of a factor of about six for a residual phase delay of 4°.

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An important component in bioimpedance measurements is the current driver, which can operate over a wide range of impedance and frequency. This paper provides a review of integrated circuit analog current drivers which have been developed in the last 10 years. Important features for current drivers are high output impedance, low phase delay, and low harmonic distortion. In this paper, the analog current drivers are grouped into two categories based on open loop or closed loop designs. The characteristics of each design are identified.

A new approach for monitoring myocardium edema is introduced. It utilizes electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to characterize edema tissue. The system has been tested on an isolated pig heart to distinguish the edema from non-edema tissue by a decrease of impedance for edema. The impedance reduction for left ventricular was 10 Ω at 100 kHz. The algorithm used for the demodulation in the developed EIS system is based on Goertzel filter which is utilized to replace the traditional coherent demodulation technique. Multisine excitation with 16 tones in the frequency range up to 1 MHz with more than 1000 samples was used for the measurements.