{"id":240310,"date":"2026-07-05T03:13:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T08:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/the-worlds-first-ultra-compact-semiconductor-chip-for-biosignal-measurement"},"modified":"2026-07-05T03:13:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T08:13:21","slug":"the-worlds-first-ultra-compact-semiconductor-chip-for-biosignal-measurement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/the-worlds-first-ultra-compact-semiconductor-chip-for-biosignal-measurement","title":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s first ultra-compact semiconductor chip for biosignal measurement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/the-worlds-first-ultra-compact-semiconductor-chip-for-biosignal-measurement2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A research team led by Prof. Junghyup Lee of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at DGIST has become the first in the world to develop a \u201ctime-interleaved noise-shaping SAR ADC (analog-to-digital converter)\u201d semiconductor chip capable of simultaneously measuring multiple biosignals, including electrocardiograms (ECG) and electromyograms (EMG). The team developed this technology in an actual semiconductor chip and successfully completed functional validation. Their findings were presented at the IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology &amp; Circuits (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vlsisymposium.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">VLSI 2026<\/a>), held in Honolulu, June 14\u201318.<\/p>\n<p>Accurately measuring multiple biosignals using wearable devices such as smartwatches requires meeting several demanding conditions. These include \u201cultra-high input impedance (resistance)\u201d to prevent signal loss even when no sweat is present on the skin or when contact is loose (dry or non-contact electrodes), a \u201cwide input range\u201d to prevent signal distortion caused by vigorous movement, and \u201cultra-low power consumption\u201d for long-term operation. However, conventional measurement approaches have struggled to satisfy all these requirements simultaneously within a single chip.<\/p>\n<p>Lee\u2019s research team addressed this challenge by proposing a novel \u201ctime-interleaved third-order noise-shaping SAR ADC\u201d architecture in which circuit blocks that consume significant power and chip area are shared across multiple channels, while only essential components (the residual capacitor banks) are allocated separately to each channel. This approach dramatically reduced the circuit area and power consumption required for multichannel systems, enabling an ultra-compact, ultra-low-power chip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A research team led by Prof. Junghyup Lee of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at DGIST has become the first in the world to develop a \u201ctime-interleaved noise-shaping SAR ADC (analog-to-digital converter)\u201d semiconductor chip capable of simultaneously measuring multiple biosignals, including electrocardiograms (ECG) and electromyograms (EMG). The team developed this technology in [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,45,1977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-finance","category-wearables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}