A Bio-Realistic Analog CMOS Cochlea Filter With High Tunability and Ultra-Steep Roll-Off

Citation

Wang S, Koickal TJ, Hamilton A, Cheung R & Smith L (2015) A Bio-Realistic Analog CMOS Cochlea Filter With High Tunability and Ultra-Steep Roll-Off. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, 9 (3), pp. 297-311. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBCAS.2014.2328321

Abstract
This paper presents the design and experimental results of a cochlea filter in analog very large scale integration (VLSI) which highly resembles physiologically measured response of the mammalian cochlea. The filter consists of three specialized sub-filter stages which respectively provide passive response in low frequencies, actively tunable response in mid-band frequencies and ultra-steep roll-off at transition frequencies from pass-band to stop-band. The sub-filters are implemented in balanced ladder topology using floating active inductors. Measured results from the fabricated chip show that wide range of mid-band tuning including gain tuning of over 20dB, Q factor tuning from 2 to 19 as well as the bio-realistic center frequency shift are achieved by adjusting only one circuit parameter. Besides, the filter has an ultra-steep roll-off reaching over 300 dB/dec. By changing biasing currents, the filter can be configured to operate with center frequencies from 31 Hz to 8 kHz. The filter isorder, consumespower and occupieschip area. A parallel bank of the proposed filter can be used as the front-end in hearing prosthesis devices, speech processors as well as other bio-inspired auditory systems owing to its bio-realistic behavior, low power consumption and small size.

Keywords
Analog VLSI; CMOS cochlea; auditory filter; bio-inspired circuits; floating active inductor

Journal
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems: Volume 9, Issue 3