Medtronic, Inc.

Robert W Hocken, Jr

Wesley A Santa

Jalpa S Shah

Joel E Sivula

Christopher M Arnett

Jeffrey David Wilkinson

Kevin K Walsh

Timothy J Denison

Gabriela C Molnar

Larry Earl Tyler

Krishna Pramod Madabhushi

The disclosure describes an implementation of a combinational thermometric-R2R that includes a thermometric DAC circuit to output the coarse output steps, an R2R circuit to control the fine output steps, and a resistor in series with the thermometric and R2R circuits. The techniques of this disclosure implement a fine resolution DAC, on the order of two nanoamps per bit, that operates at low current, yet maintains monotonicity throughout the DAC output range.

Thermometric-R2R combinational DAC architecture to improve stimulation resolution

Techniques are described for magnetic field detection using a plurality of Hall sensors and chopper-amplifier circuit. Determination that a magnetic field is present from measurement from one of the Hall sensors may trigger confirmation or confirmation and reconfirmation of the presence of the magnetic field from measurements from one or more of the other Hall sensors.

Hall sensor circuit for magnetic field detection in implantable medical device

A hardware based block moving controller of an active device such as an implantable medical device that provides electrical stimulation reads a parameter data from a block of memory and then writes the parameter data to a designated register set of a component that performs an active function. The block of memory may include data that specifies a size of the block of memory to be moved to the register set. The block of memory may also include data that indicates a number of triggers to skip before moving a next block of memory to the register set. A trigger that causes the block moving controller to move the data from the block of memory to the register set may be generated in various ways such as through operation of the component having the register set or by a separate timer.

Methods and devices that utilize hardware to move blocks of operating parameter data from memory to a register set

A hardware based block moving controller of an active device such as an implantable medical device that provides electrical stimulation reads a parameter data from a block of memory and then writes the parameter data to a designated register set of a component that performs an active function. The block of memory may include data that specifies a size of the block of memory to be moved to the register set. Multiple individual block mover components of the controller may move respective blocks, each responsive to a dedicated trigger or to a same trigger. Furthermore, a given block mover or individual block mover component may have multiple selectable triggers. The block moving hardware based controller may have one or more memory devices to access, and the firmware may write to one memory while the block moving hardware based controller may read from another.

This disclosure describes techniques for generating stimulation current pulses that have differing pulse shapes in a medical device. A circuit architecture is described that is configured to charge a capacitor to an initial amount of charge, modulate the amount of charge stored in the capacitor based on a control signal, and generate a stimulation current pulse that has an amplitude based on the amount charge stored in the capacitor. The circuit architecture may be configured to generate complex pulse shapes, such as, e.g., steps, ramps, bursts, and combinations thereof.

Stimulation waveform generator for an implantable medical device

Cyclic redundancy calculations are provided by operating on a data stream, e.g., a data stream in an implantable medical device, to perform a polynomial division thereon using one of a first cyclic redundancy code generator polynomial and a second cyclic redundancy code generator polynomial. The first cyclic redundancy code generator polynomial is a higher order polynomial than the second cyclic redundancy code generator polynomial and contains all terms of the second cyclic redundancy code generator polynomial. The polynomial division may be implemented using linear feedback shift register circuitry and circuitry to select between the use of the first or second cyclic redundancy code generator polynomial.

Cyclic redundancy calculation circuitry for use in medical devices and methods regarding same

A method and apparatus including conditional add and conditional add/subtract instructions are provided for use in the instruction set of a medical device instruction processor. More specifically, the conditional add and add/subtract instructions are provided to add two operands if a predetermined condition is satisfied within the instruction processor hardware. Additionally, the conditional add/subtract instruction may be used to subtract one operand from another operand if the predetermined condition is not satisfied. These instructions are adapted for use in implementing an efficient, interruptible, firmware-controlled multiplication or division mechanism. The inventive system allows multiplication or division operations to be interrupted at various intermediate points during the multiplication or division operation to thereby reducing interrupt latency.

Growing community of inventors

Scottsdale, AZ, United States of America

Robert W Hocken, Jr