A Special-Purpose Embedded Controller for an Implantable Spinal Cord Stimulation System

This paper reports on a special-purpose controller dedicated to an implantable spinal cord electrical stimulation(SCS) microsystem. The controller supports parallel biphasic stimulation pulses on 16 channels concurrently, and recording neural response on any one of the sites with 8 bits of resolution. Anodic and cathodic pulse amplitudes are programmable with 8 bits of resolution, while the timing of the pulses is controllable in the real time through the data packets receiving serially via a wireless link.