A 0.00426 mm2 77.6-dB Dynamic Range VCO-Based CTDSM for Multi-Channel Neural Recording
, Xiaolin Yang 1,*, Chaohan Wang 3, Anastasios Vilouras 2 and Carolina Mora Lopez 1,*Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper well alugn with the scope and standards of the journal. The contribution of the paper at present is well argued and at present it can be accepted.
Author Response
R1: The paper well aligns with the scope and standards of the journal. The contribution of the paper at present is well argued and at present it can be accepted.
R/ Thanks for the recognition.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper has introduced a good topic about a small-area VCO-based continuous-time delta-sigma modulator 9 (CTDSM) for multi-channel neural recording applications. However, this paper can not be published at this stage.
I would suggest the following:
1. The abstract need to be rewritten in a way that gives the audience a good summary of the overall work. Please refer to the journal format.
2. The introduction is very short and does not give a good overview of the previous work. The number of references is too scarce to be published in a scientific journal.
3. For the PCB, which software did you use to design your PCB?
4. What makes this chip unique?
5. In figure 7, why there is an overlap in the points? It seems there is a delay which can cause that.
6. Table 2 shows this work does not have any signification contribution compared to others.
7. I would think if the authors combine the result and discussion in one section, it will be a better represent the to the result.
8. The conclusion must be a short paragraph that covers the overall with stating the work limitation.
Author Response
Please see the attachement.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The overall organization of this paper is clear. However, I have some concerns about this manuscript.
1. The introduction is brief; there is room for improvement.
2. Table 2 should include the FOM
Author Response
The overall organization of this paper is clear. However, I have some concerns about this manuscript.
1. The introduction is brief; there is room for improvement.
R/ Thanks for raising this concern. In this revision, we have expanded the background introduction on page 1-2.
2. Table 2 should include the FOM
R/ Thanks for raising this concern. However, we would like to clarify that using ADC FoM to benchmark direct-digitization neural recording circuits is not commonly recommended as it might cause unfair comparison since the ADC FoM is typically traded off for many other important metrics such as input impedance and circuit area. This is reflected in the fact that none of the works under comparison ([16]-[18], [24]-[26]) reported such FoM and we would like to keep this convention.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have answered all my questions.
