Digitization of NMR RF signals directly at the feedpoint of the coil in conjunction with optical or wireless data transmission resolves many technical, usability, safety and cost problems in high channel count arrays involved with cable routing to an analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) located either in the technical room, at the magnet or even in the bore [1, 2]. Cable weight and space requirements are obviously reduced as well as signal losses, coupling and interference along the signal lines. Furthermore omitting common-mode currents during both transmission and reception by broadcasting the digitized data fiber-optically directly from the coil conductor is pivoting for coil design. These currents (see Fig. 1.a) not only represent one of the major safety risks during RF transmission but also an unwanted source of noise and signal coupling. Thus cable routing and trapping are found to be one of the most difficult and substantial problems faced in practical implementations of RF coil arrays having to meet SNR, space, weight and usability requirements. The electromagnetic effects of the cabling can mostly not be incorporated comprehensively in existing full-wave simulations, particularly not for all potential scenarios during usage. Finding a viable solution therefore mostly resides to experience and extensive testing. Alternatively analogue optical transmission has been proposed [3] but modulators or lasers achieving the required noise figures and dynamic range are often confounded by their use of magnetic parts or employ potentially harmful amounts of optical power. Here we implement an entire receiver that is placed directly on the coil element and sends the digital data via low power optical links (Fig. 1.b). The ADC and its acquisition chain were integrated in two Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) to meet the space and power constraints in conjunction with the set requirements carrier frequency, bandwidth, noise figure and dynamic range for operation at 1.5 to 7T.The RF signal from the coil is routed fully differentially [4] and digitized by two custom ICs, one for preamplification and one for digitization and digital filtering for frequencies of 1.5 T to 7 T systems. The ASICs are implemented in a 130 nm standard CMOS process. The preamplifier is a novel differential design offering a low-impedance input for array decoupling [5] and a high degree of common-mode-rejection. The receiver IC comprises mixer, local oscillator (LO), filtering, gain scaling, a sigma-delta ADC and decimation. The data is then serialized off-chip and transmitted over a fiber-optic link employing a custom, non-magnetic, micro-manufactured electro-optical VCSEL laser transmitter and photodiode receiver for receiving control signals. The preamplifier, the receiver, electro-optical input/output and the biasing system were mounted on a rigid-flex foldable PCB (Fig. 2) forming a general purpose acquisition module. Coil specific circuitry for tuning, matching and detuning were implemented on separate low-loss substrates.The prototype (Fig. 2) confirmed the targeted specifications [6] of a minimum noise figure below 1.2 dB and an instantaneous dynamic range exceeding 130 dB/√Hz using only 284 mA over 3.3 V of supply current. First imaging results were obtained at 3T using a standard, gradient-echo sequence connecting the receiver to the RX port of the volume head coil for in-vivo imaging and a custom surface coil (similar to Fig. 4) for imaging a grapefruit and a pineapple (Fig. 3).A coil array receiver system comprising custom integrated circuits for RF signal detection directly on-coil has been implemented, including custom design of the key integrated circuits. The resulting small form factor, low power consumption and sheath current suppression enable lighter, safer and cheaper receiver arrays with higher channel counts. Consequently arrays with higher performance offering better usability or even wearability can be constructed from this platform. Furthermore, the realized fully differential analogue signal pathways offer a high degree of common-mode rejection and mostly load independent balancing which drastically simplifies coil design. Compared to HBT/HEMT processes typically employed for high-fidelity mixed-signal applications, the standard CMOS process of 130 nm offers a low volume threshold and comparably low lot production cost which is required to meet the quantities for MRI applications. Nevertheless sufficient analogue signal performance is obtained for digitizing the RF signals of receiver arrays directly on each coil element.