Artifact and Fatigue

The photograph below shows the A3030E lamp leads with ground spring, strain relief, and collars. Each lamp lead we wrap around one coil of the spring. When cemented in a head fixture, the spring will be rigid and the wrap of the lamp leads will provide strain relief for the two 3-mm black head shrink collars. The collars are glued to the lamp leads.


Figure: A3030E Batch E157.3-14 Lamp Leads. We have two leads wrapped around spring coils for strain relief.

We test the above arrangement in a mock dental cement fixture, shown below. From previous mock fixtures, we learn the dental cement must be allowed to cure for fifteen minutes while stationary so as to ensure that the cement will harden while tight around the collars, leads, and spring. In order for the grounding spring to be effective at stabilizing the potential of the animal body, here represented by the water in the perti dish, at least one coil of the spring must protrude from the head fixture to make contact with the body fluids.


Figure: Mock Head Fixture for A3030E Lamp Leads and Grounding Spring.

We cover the head fixture with water and place the lamp leads in the water with bare ends. We pull on the lamp leads with a 1-N force two hundred times. We flash the lamp 50 ms pulses 10 Hz full power. Total EEG noise is 8.7 μV rms. In the EEG spectrum we see a 7-μV harmonic at 10 Hz. We pull with a 2-N force on the leads another one hundred times. The total noise increases to 31 μV rms. We have broken at least one of the collar seals, and we see a 100-μVpp triangle wave on the EEG signal. Another hundred 2-N tugs on the lamp leads and the triangle wave is 140 μVpp. We vary pulse length and obtain the plot of noise amplitude versus pulse length.


Figure: Lamp Artifact Amplitude versus Pulse Length for 10-Hz Stimulus and Head Fixture with Breached Collars. Water: EEG leads and head fixture in water. Saline: EEG leads and head fixture in 1.2% saline. Ground: EEG leads out of water, ground spring absorbing lamp current.
We tug on the lamp leads some more. The lamp turns off. We adjust the leads and it turns on again. The lamp turns off. We adjust the leads and it turns on again. The lamp lead itself is broken. We now find that data transmission is being disturbed by lamp flashes. The lamp lead silicone insulation is broken. We cannot obtain consistent measurements of lamp artifact for any given pulse length, but the artifact can be as large as 2 mV when the broken lamp lead makes direct contact with the ground spring.

We observe four stages of lamp artifact. In the Stage 1, lamp artifact is <10 μV rms. The collar seals and lamp leads are intact. In Stage 2, lamp artifact is <50 μV rms. The collar seals have been breached, but they are still tight. In Stage 3, the artifact can be as large as 200 μV rms. The collar seals are loose, with a thick layer of fluid to conduct lamp current into the ground lead. In Stage 4, the artifact can be as large as 2000 μV, reception can drop as low as 50%, and the lamp flashing is intermittent. One of the lamp leads is broken or its insulation has ripped. The current entering the ground lead is great enough to disrupt data transmission and lamp flashing.

For Stages 1 to 3, lamp artifact for 10 ms flashes at 10 Hz is <50 μV. In Stage 4, the lamp may not flashing and data transmission is failing. We reach Stage 4 only if we subject the lamp leads to so much fatigue that they break. Given that our helical leads have a long record of surviving implants of many months, we are hopeful that we will not reach Stage 4 during an ISL implantation.

Performance of A3030E Circuit

We have two prototypes of our A3030E Stage 8 ISL circuit. The photograph below shows circuit E8.1 with all leads loaded, including grounding spring and a temporary white LED for our pre-production tests.



Figure: Un-Encapsulated A3030E Circuit with Programming Extension.

We test all the new features of the A3030E. After a couple of minor modifications, we find these features all work. In particular, the grounding spring and differential amplifier together reduce our simulated lamp artifact to 20 μV, compared to at least 30 mV for the single-ended input of the A3030D. We claim the A3030E with its additional grounding lead will not require a collar seal around the lamp leads where they pass into the head fixture cement.

Antenna Switch: The A3030E shares a single antenna for data and commands. The crystal radio uses the antenna except when the logic chip is powered up and requests the antenna for transmission. This sharing appears to work perfectly, with no loss of either data transmission or reception compared to the two-antenna devices.

Crystal Radio: The new crystal radio layout is more compact. It provides more gain than the earlier 900-MHz crystal radios and extends the reliable command reception range from 50 cm to 80 cm.

Battery Monitor: The A3030E measures its own battery voltage using its spare ADC input channel. We are able to monitor the immediate drop in battery voltage due to turning on the lamp, and the slow decline in battery voltage due to the lamp remaining on. The battery monitor will allow the Neuroarchiver to issue a warning before the battery runs down so far that it suffers permanent damage.

Battery Recharging: We connect the L− to +8 V and the L+ lead to 0 V and charge the battery at a rate of 40 mA through the 75-Ω resistance of the lamp leads. The lead resistance and the charging diode voltage drops complicate the charging process, but with a specially-designed charger, we could re-charge them in the field in less than ten hours. As it stands, we can re-charge them in twenty-four hours with our own power supplies.

Differential Amplifier: The A3030E EEG input is a differential amplifier. In water-filled Petri dishes, a 2-V lamp switching voltage applied to both EEG inputs produced no more than 100 μV lamp artifact. The differential amplifier is, however, vulnerable to 1 MHz switching noise from lamp modulation, which we use to reduce the average power of the lamp. In air, this modulation artifact can be as large as 200 μV, but within a conducting animal body we expect it to be negligible. At 100% brightness, however, this modulation artifact does not exist.

Grounding Spring: The 3030E grounding pads allow us to attach a fifth lead to act as a ground in the tunnel made by the lamp leads as they emerge from the cement of the head fixture. We simulate an animal body with head fixture in Petri dishes. We use a tunnel resistance 100 kΩ, this being the minimum we have observed in our collar seal tests. Without the grounding spring, the separated EEG electrodes pick up 500 μV of lamp artifact. The grounding spring reduces artifact to 20 μV.

We initiated production of more circuits today, and expect to have them next week. We have a few bugs in the logic program to figure out, and the new firmware should provide one battery voltage measurement per second as part of normal operation, using the meta-data channel number fifteen.