The IEEE AP-MTT Chapter Presents

Posted: 

"On-Chip RF Power Harvesting Module for Biomedical Implantable Wireless Sensors"

Presented by Mahmoud H. Ouda

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

Date: 1:30 PM-2:30 PM  Thursday, January 23, 2014  

Place: MRC Conference Room, ElectroScience Laboratory

               1330 Kinnear Road, Columbus, OH 43212

Abstract: RF power harvesting is highly essential to enable battery-less wireless sensing platforms for many applications. One of the most vital applications is the biomedical implants. In this research work, we present an on-chip RF power harvesting module designed and implemented on standard 0.18 µm CMOS process. This module has been integrated with an on-chip antenna to build a miniaturized 3 x1.5 mm2 System-on-Chip (SoC) for an implantable sensor chip to wirelessly monitor the intraocular pressure of glaucoma patients. It includes a five stage RF rectifier with an on-chip antenna, a DC voltage limiter, two voltage sensors, a low dropout voltage regulator (LDO), and MOSCAP based on-chip storage. To emulate the eye environment in measurements, a custom test setup is developed which comprises plexiglass cavities filled with saline solution. System and circuit design and the measurement setup and results will be discussed. Then the limitation of the designed system will be addressed and motivates for the second part of this research work which is to build an adaptive reconfigurable RF power harvesting module to overcome this limitation.

Bio: Mahmoud H. Ouda received the B.Sc. degree in electronics and communications (magna cum laude) and M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in 2006 and 2011, respectively, and is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.

From 2007 to 2009, he was a Research and Development Design Engineer with the Al-Kharafi Group, The Arab Company for Computer Manufacturing, where he was involved with the design and development of communication and computing products. From 2009 to 2010, he was a Research Circuit Engineer with ACCIT, an EDA company of the Arab Academy for Science and Technology (AAST), during which time he was involved with research on fast parallel electronic design automation (EDA) tools. His research interests include analog RF integrated circuit (RFIC) design, RF power harvesters, and biomedical implantables.

Mr. Ouda was the recipient of First Prize of the Worldwide Mentor Graphics Competition for the Technology Leadership Award (TLA-2008). He was also the second-place recipient of the International Microelectronics Olympiad, Yerevan, Armenia, 2012. His research on RF energy harvesting was awarded the DOW Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award (SISCA) in 2012.