A Novel Protocol-Free Bandage-Cover Cryptographer.

Cyber security has become an important problem nowadays as almost everyone is often linked to the Internet for business and entertainment. Conventional cryptographers fail to address timely issues regarding cyber-attacks, such as cyber identity theft. In this work, we propose a novel idea, namely, a bandage-cover cryptographer (BCC), which is completely software-defined and protocol-free. Besides, this new cryptographic approach can enable camouflages to confuse data-mining robots, which are often encountered in the cyber world nowadays. Because all of the existing cryptographers aim to protect the entire data (document and file) altogether, they cannot have camouflagibility to mislead data-mining robots. Conversely, by our proposed novel BCC, one can select arbitrary contexts or parts of the data (related to individual identify and/or private confidential information) under protection. To evaluate such a first-ever cryptographer capable of misleading data-mining robots, we define two new metrics, namely: 1) vulnerability and 2) camouflage rates. The theoretical analyses of vulnerability rate and camouflage rate for our proposed new BCC are also presented in this article to demonstrate the corresponding effectiveness.

A Fully Integrated Wireless SoC for Motor Function Recovery After Spinal Cord Injury.

This paper presents a wirelessly powered, fully integrated system-on-a-chip (SoC) supporting 160-channel stimulation, 16-channel recording, and 48-channel bio-impedance characterization to enable partial motor function recovery through epidural spinal cord electrical stimulation. A wireless transceiver is designed to support quasi full-duplex data telemetry at a data rate of 2 Mb/s. Furthermore, a unique in situ bio-impedance characterization scheme based on time-domain analysis is implemented to derive the Randles cell electrode model of the electrode-electrolyte interface. The SoC supports concurrent stimulation and recording while the high-density stimulator array meets an output compliance voltage of up to ±10 V with versatile stimulus programmability. The SoC consumes 18 mW and occupies a chip area of 5.7 mm × 4.4 mm using 0.18 µm high-voltage CMOS process. In our in vivo rodent experiment, the SoC is used to perform wireless recording of EMG responses while stimulation is applied to enable the standing and stepping of a paralyzed rat. To facilitate the system integration, a novel thin film polymer packaging technique is developed to provide a heterogeneous integration of the SoC, coils, discrete components, and high-density flexible electrode array, resulting in a miniaturized prototype implant with a weight and form factor of 0.7 g and 0.5 cm3, respectively.

Wireless gigabit data telemetry for large-scale neural recording.

Implantable wireless neural recording from a large ensemble of simultaneously acting neurons is a critical component to thoroughly investigate neural interactions and brain dynamics from freely moving animals. Recent researches have shown the feasibility of simultaneously recording from hundreds of neurons and suggested that the ability of recording a larger number of neurons results in better signal quality. This massive recording inevitably demands a large amount of data transfer. For example, recording 2000 neurons while keeping the signal fidelity ( > 12 bit, > 40 KS/s per neuron) needs approximately a 1-Gb/s data link. Designing a wireless data telemetry system to support such (or higher) data rate while aiming to lower the power consumption of an implantable device imposes a grand challenge on neuroscience community. In this paper, we present a wireless gigabit data telemetry for future large-scale neural recording interface. This telemetry comprises of a pair of low-power gigabit transmitter and receiver operating at 60 GHz, and establishes a short-distance wireless link to transfer the massive amount of neural signals outward from the implanted device. The transmission distance of the received neural signal can be further extended by an externally rendezvous wireless transceiver, which is less power/heat-constraint since it is not at the immediate proximity of the cortex and its radiated signal is not seriously attenuated by the lossy tissue. The gigabit data link has been demonstrated to achieve a high data rate of 6 Gb/s with a bit-error-rate of 10(-12) at a transmission distance of 6 mm, an applicable separation between transmitter and receiver. This high data rate is able to support thousands of recording channels while ensuring a low energy cost per bit of 2.08 pJ/b.