A Wide-Dynamic Range (-40 °C to 180 °C) Active Wireless MEMS Temperature Sensor With 7m °C Sensitivity

Abstract

We demonstrate a highly-accurate active wireless microelectromechanical (MEMS) temperature sensor with the largest reported dynamic range (-40°C to 180°C) among active MEMS temperature sensors. The sensor uses a 27.2 MHz high quality factor (Q > 3,200) AlN-on-Si thin-film piezoelectric-on-silicon (TPoS) MEMS resonator to enable highly accurate temperature sensing, with minimum sensitivity (S), better than 0.011 °C across this wide temperature range. The wireless sensor uses an innovative frequency shift keying (FSK) 900 MHz direct up-conversion transmitter. The transmitter uses frequency multipliers for up-conversion, obviating the need for a temperature-stable frequency reference clock, thereby preserving the temperature coefficient of frequency (TCF) of the resonator, and consequently the sensitivity of the sensor. The experimental results show a very high correlation (<0.03% error) between the TCF of the MEMS oscillator and that of the transmitter output signal, demonstrating the viability of the proposed direct up-conversion technique. A detailed analysis of the Allan variance for MEMS temperature sensors which can be used to design for a given minimum sensitivity, is also presented in the paper.