A microcontroller-based interface circuit for lossy capacitive sensors

Abstract

This paper introduces and analyses a low-cost microcontroller-based interface circuit for lossy capacitive sensors, i.e. sensors whose parasitic conductance (Gx) is not negligible. Such a circuit relies on a previous circuit also proposed by the authors, in which the sensor is directly connected to a microcontroller without using either a signal conditioner or an analogue-to-digital converter in the signal path. The novel circuit uses the same hardware, but it performs an additional measurement and executes a new calibration technique. As a result, the sensitivity of the circuit to Gx decreases significantly (a factor higher than ten), but not completely due to the input capacitances of the port pins of the microcontroller. Experimental results show a relative error in the capacitance measurement below 1% for Gx < 200 nS, which is quite remarkable considering the simplicity of the circuit proposed. The measurement of a commercial capacitive humidity sensor subjected to condensation (in order to have a significant value of Gx) shows the effectiveness of the circuit.