In this retinal prosthesis project, a rehabilitative device is designed to
replace the functionality of defective photoreceptors in patients suffering
from retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD),
The device consists of an extraocular and an intraocular unit. The implant
able component receives power and a data signal via a telemetric inductive
link between the two units. The extraocular unit includes a video camera an
d video processing board, a telemetry protocol encoder chip, and an RF ampl
ifier and primary coil. The intraocular unit consists of a secondary coil,
a rectifier and regulator, a retinal chip with a telemetry protocol decoder
, a stimulus signal generator, and an electrode array, This paper focuses o
n the design, fabrication, and testing of a microchip which serves as the t
elemetry protocol decoder and stimulus signal generator. It is fabricated b
y MOSIS with 1.2-mm CMOS technology and was demonstrated to provide the des
ired biphasic current stimulus pulses for an array of 100 retinal electrode
s at video frame fates.