San Diego, Calif.-based DexCom Inc., a manufacturer of implantable medical devices, is using AMI Semiconductor’s ultra-low power wireless ASIC system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution for its new implantable glucose monitoring system. The wireless frequency band used in this application is the 402-405 MHz medical implant communications service (MICS) band, which is reserved for communication with implantable devices.

“Our ASTRIC technology with its quick start oscillator proved crucial to reach the very low power consumption allowed for the RF communication,” said Kirk Peterson, AMIS wireless product manager.

“We carefully evaluated several vendors and selected AMIS because of their expertise in ultra-low power, mixed-signal ASIC design and their ability to prove feasibility in using RF in implantable applications,” said Andy Rasdal, president and CEO of DexCom. The specifications for the AMIS solution were developed in close collaboration between the engineering teams at DexCom and AMIS and required extremely low power consumption due to implant longevity and size restrictions. The total average current drain from the battery is less than 3 microamperes. The AMIS SoC includes a 32 kHz oscillator, current and voltage references, high-precision analog-to-digital converter (ADC), digital filtering and sensor bias running at 100% duty cycle, and a low-duty RF section.