Sensor Readout Circuit Research Articles

A Self-Powered Wireless Temperature Sensor Platform for Foot Ulceration Monitoring.

This work describes a self-powered wireless temperature sensor platform that can be used for foot ulceration monitoring for diabetic patients. The proposed self-powered sensor platform consists of a piezoelectric bimorph, a power conditioning circuit, a temperature sensor readout circuit, and a wireless module. The piezoelectric bimorph mounted inside the shoe effectively converts the foot movement into electric energy that can power the entire sensor platform. Furthermore, a sensor platform was designed, considering the energy requirement of 4.826 mJ for transmitting one data packet of 18 bytes. The self-powered sensor platform prototype was evaluated with five test subjects with different weights and foot shapes; the test results show the subjects had to walk an average of 119.6 s to transmit the first data packet and an additional average of 71.2 s to transmit the subsequent data packet. The temperature sensor showed a resolution of 0.1 °C and a sensitivity of 56.7 mV/°C with a power conditioning circuit efficiency of 74.5%.

A low power 10‐bit 1 MS/s cyclic analog to digital converter for complementary metal oxide semiconductors image sensors with comparator‐based switched‐capacitor technique

AbstractThis paper proposes a power‐optimized column‐parallel cyclic analog to digital converter (ADC) for complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOS) image sensor readout circuits. The design combines a 2.5‐bit/cycle architecture with a comparator shutdown technique based on the comparator‐based switched‐capacitor (CBSC) circuits, which results in a significant reduction in the operating time of the threshold detection comparator compared with conventional CBSC circuits. This reduction in operating time leads to power savings as the threshold detection comparator can be shut down quickly. The paper also presents a comprehensive analysis of the nonideal factors of CBSC circuits and the coarse and fine conversion allocation scheme. The 10‐bit two‐stage comparator‐based cyclic ADC is designed in a 110 nm 1P4 M CMOS technology. Simulation results show that the effective number of bit (ENOB) is 9.7 bits, with each column consuming 103 W of power. The proposed cyclic ADC has a figure of merit (FOM) of 123 fJ/conv‐step. Compared with conventional structures, the proposed design reduces the power consumption of the ADC by 34.3% while maintaining the same level of performance.

A Highly Integrated Lab-on-a-CMOS Platform for Real-Time Monitoring of E. Coli Growth Kinetics.

Existing miniaturized and cost-effective solutions for bacterial growth monitoring usually require offline incubators with constant temperature to culture the bio-samples prior to measurement. Such a separated sample preparation and detection scheme requires extensive human intervention, risks contamination, and suffers from poor temporal resolution. To achieve integrated sample preparation and real-time bacterial growth monitoring, this article presents a lab-on-a-CMOS platform incorporates an optical sensor array, temperature sensor array, micro-heaters, and readout circuits. Escherichia coli's (E. coli) optimum growth temperature of 37 °C is achieved through a heat regulation system consisting of two micro-heaters and an on-chip temperature sensor array. A photodiode array with an in-pixel capacitive trans-impedance amplifier to reduce inter-pixel cross-coupling is designed to extract the optical information during bacterial growth. To balance the footprint, power consumption, and quantization speed, a 10 b column successive-approximation register (SAR)/single-slope (SS) dual-mode analog-to-digital converter (ADC) is designed to digitize the temperature and optical signals. Fabricated in a standard 0.18 um CMOS process, the proposed platform can regulate the sample temperature to 37 +/- 0.2/0.3 °C within 32 mins. Enabled by an on-chip heat regulation system and photodetectors, the prototype demonstrates a real-time monitoring of bacterial growth kinetics and antibiotic responses. Minute-level temporal resolution is achieved as this proposed platform is free of extensive and time-consuming human intervention. The proposed platform can be viably used in contamination sensitive applications such as antibiotic tests, stem cell cultures, and organ-on-chips.

Energy-Efficient Power Management Interface With Adaptive HV Multimode Stimulation for Power-Sensor Integrated Patch-Type Systems.

An energy-efficient power management interface (PMI) with adaptive high-voltage (HV) stimulation capability is presented for patch-type healthcare devices where power management and sensor readout circuits are integrated. For efficient power supply, it proposes a multimode buck converter with an adaptive mode controller, delivering 95.6% peak power conversion efficiency and over 90% efficiency across a wide 4-440 mA output current range. For energy-efficient stimulation, a HV stimulation system is designed to perform mode-adaptive on/off control, where the charge pump (CP) is adopted for periodic power saving. The CP output is adaptively tuned to minimize the stimulator's power waste by utilizing a bio-impedance path in the sensor circuit. The stimulation core supports multimode functionality of current-/voltage-controlled stimulations with monopolar and bipolar modes, providing ten kinds of various stimulation waveform shape. For efficient system operation, battery interface circuits are included to monitor state-of-charge (SOC) conditions, and a device power adjustment scheme is proposed to provide SOC-based maximum 28% power reduced optimal operation of high-resolution and low-power. The power-sensor integrated circuits were fabricated in a 0.18-μm CMOS process, and the proposed schemes were experimentally verified. For system-level feasibility, a patch-type device prototype was manufactured, and both power and bio-signal interfaces were functionally demonstrated.

Study of a High-Precision Read-Out Integrated Circuit for Bridge Sensors.

Bridge sensors are widely used in military and civilian fields, and their demand gradually increases each year. Digital sensors are widely used in the military and civilian fields. High-precision and low-power analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) as sensor read-out circuits are a research hotspot. Sigma-delta ADC circuits based on switched-capacitor topology have the advantages of high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), good linearity, and better compatibility with CMOS processes. In this work, a fourth-order feed-forward sigma-delta modulator and a digital decimation filter are designed and implemented with a correlated double sampling technique (CDS) to suppress pre-integrator low-frequency noise. This work used an active pre-compensator circuit for deep phase compensation to improve the system's stability in the sigma-delta modulator. The modulator's local feedback factor is designed to be adjustable off-chip to eliminate the effect of process errors. A three-stage cascade structure was chosen for the post-stage digital filter, significantly reducing the number of operations and the required memory cells in the digital circuit. Finally, the layout design and engineering circuit were fabricated by a standard 0.35 μm CMOS process from Shanghai Hua Hong with a chip area of 9 mm2. At a 5 V voltage supply and sampling frequency of 6.144 MHz, the modulator power consumption is 13 mW, the maximum input signal amplitude is -3 dBFs, the 1 Hz dynamic range is about 118 dB, the modulator signal-to-noise ratio can reach 110.5 dB when the signal bandwidth is 24 kHz, the practical bit is about 18.05 bits, and the harmonic distortion is about -113 dB, which meets the design requirements. The output bit stream is 24 bits.

A high precision and low power consumption switching capacitor readout circuit

In this paper, a high precision and low power switching capacitor readout circuit for MEMS sensors is proposed. The capacitance readout circuit is realized by using the total difference separation loop structure composed of a switching capacitor charge amplifier. In order to reduce the aggravation of common-mode parasitic capacitance to the input offset error and amplifier gain error in the readout circuit, the input common-mode feedback compensation structure and oversampled successive approximation (OSA) readout technology are introduced. In addition, the circuit adopts a non-overlapping nested clock to reduce charge injection and improve output accuracy. Based on SMIC 0.18 μm CMOS technology, the circuit can recognize 0-0.2 pF capacitance signals and convert them into voltage signals, achieving good linear fitting. When the common-mode parasitic capacitance is 1-16 p, it has good resistance to common-mode parasitic capacitance, and the precision of the capacitor readout circuit is increased by 3.9%. Compared with traditional readout circuits, it has a simple structure and low power consumption.

A simple digital readout circuit for differential resistive or capacitive sensors

This paper introduces and analyzes a novel direct interface circuit (DIC) that directly connects differential resistive and capacitive sensors to digital processors (DPs), performing a magnitude-to-time-to-digital conversion of the information they provide. The simple circuit performs the readout using two passive components, the differential sensor and the DP. In some cases, the circuit may require an additional passive element. The DP only uses common digital resources such as bidirectional pins or a counter, meaning microcontrollers, FPGAs, or ASICs could all be used as DPs. Different DICs proposed in the literature for reading differential sensors require three time measurement processes to estimate the variable to be measured. The new circuit requires only one, saving time and energy dissipation and reducing the number of error sources. A design based on an FPGA has been implemented as a proof of concept. Measurement times in the order of 1.1–1.3 ms have been obtained with this configuration. Errors in the readout of a differential resistive sensor are below 0.34% in the worst case and below 0.63% for a differential capacitive sensor.

Low-Power and High-Precision Readout Circuit Design for Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) Acceleration Sensors

MEMS acceleration sensors are widely used in Internet of Things, electronic machinery, aerospace and other fields with outstanding advantages such as small size, high reliability, intelligence and high integration. Traditional MEMS acceleration sensors limit their applications due to high-power consumption and low-precision; the standby time and service life are being increased in order to study the low-power and high-precision MEMS acceleration sensor readout, this paper adopts the Fully Differential Switched Capacitor-Variable Gain Amplifier (FDSC-VGA) instead of the traditional high-power Capacitance-to-Voltage Converter (CVC-VGA), Sample-and-Hold Circuit (S&H) and Anti-Aliasing Filter (AAF) as front-end modules. At the same time, a high-precision four-phase non-crossover clock is designed to precisely control the timing switch, thus effectively reducing the power consumption of the MEMS acceleration sensor readout circuit; then, the overall readout circuit is simulated and verified by Dong Bu HiTek 0.18 μm process. The results show that the error rate of the output voltage of FDSC-VGA is reduced from 8.03% to 0.88% compared with the conventional readout circuit, and the noise power consumption of MEMS acceleration sensor readout circuit can be reduced by 65%.

Achieving Low-Noise, High-Bandwidth, Nanoscale-Resolution Position Sensing With GMR Sensors

This article presents a low-noise high-bandwidth giant magnetoresistance (GMR) sensor-readout circuit for nanometer resolution position sensing, a critical requirement in several precision applications such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). The main impediment to performance is the GMR sensor’s significantly higher 1/f noise extending over large bandwidths, thereby limiting the achievable SNR. Therefore, the sensing system needs to be designed at the system level in order to minimize excess intrinsic noise generation and transmission, as well as external noise pickup. The noise characteristics of the GMR sensor and its readout circuit components, and their effect on SNR, are investigated analytically and experimentally. A general process for designing the readout circuit, applicable not just to GMR sensors but also to other high-1/f-noise sensors, is presented. A resolution of 2.5 nm over a bandwidth of 100 kHz is demonstrated on an AFM nanopositioner, a ten-fold improvement over previously reported GMR sensor performance and comparable to the state-of-the-art, but more complex, capacitive sensors. The readout scheme is simple to implement using COTS components and easily extendable to even higher bandwidths, unlike other schemes, such as modulation/demodulation, where the requirement for increasingly higher carrier frequencies renders further improvements in bandwidth impractical.

A Wireless Soil pH and Conductance Monitoring Chip Powered by Soil Microbial and Photovoltaic Energy Cells.

This paper presents an energy-autonomous wireless soil pH and electrical conductance measurement IC powered by soil microbial and photovoltaic energy. The chip integrates highly efficient dual-input, dual-output power management units, sensor readout circuits, a wireless receiver, and a transmitter. The design scavenges ambient energy with a maximal power point tracking mechanism while achieving a peak efficiency of 81.3% and the efficiency is more than 50% over the 0.05-14 mW load range. The sensor readout IC achieves a sensitivity of -8.8 kHz/pH and 6 kHz·m/S, a noise floor of 0.92 x 10-3 pH value, and 1.4 mS/m conductance. To avoid interference, a 433 MHz transceiver incorporates chirp modulation and on-off keying (OOK) modulation for data uplink and downlink communication. The receiver sensitivity is -80 dBm, and the output transmission power is -4 dBm. The uplink data rate is 100 kb/s using burst chirp modulation and gated Class E PA, while the downlink data rate is 10 kb/s with a self-frequency tracking mixer-first receiver.

A PVT Compensated Resistance to Frequency Converter for Sensor Array Read-Out

This brief presents a PVT (process, voltage, temperature) compensated CMOS resistor to frequency read-out circuit for resistive sensing applications. Resistive sensing is used in different applications, such as olfactory sensing. An accurate read-out circuit is needed to detect the resistance values for on-chip sensor arrays. Existing techniques suffer from PVT variations and require a large silicon chip area. The proposed design offers a simple, accurate, PVT insensitive sensor read-out circuit where a closed-loop configuration, a switched capacitor resistor, operational amplifier integrator, and a voltage-controlled oscillator are used. The design is implemented and fabricated using TSMC 180 nm CMOS technology. The value for the measured sensor&#x2019;s resistance ranges between 10k and 100M <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> with an accuracy of 0.1&#x0025; while the chip area is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.0455{ {mm}}^{{2}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> with <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$98.1\mu {W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> power consumption. Also, the settling time for the step resistance change is about <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2 \mu \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>.

A Low-Noise and Monolithic Array Tactile Sensor Based on Incremental Delta-Sigma Analog-to-Digital Converters

A low-noise and monolithic array tactile sensor, in which a tactile sensing unit, a low-noise analog front end (AFE), and a high-resolution delta-sigma analog-to-digital converter (ΔΣ ADC) are fully integrated, is presented in this paper. In this proposed system, compared with a discrete-device-based board-level system, the parasitic effect of a long cable connection can be reduced, and results are more accurate. Furthermore, a smaller system area and a lower power consumption can be achieved in this monolithic system. A discrete-continuous mixed mode bandpass AFE is proposed to filter out low-frequency flicker noise and high-frequency white noise. In order to improve the quantization rate of the sensor readout circuit and further suppress the high-frequency noise, a two-way alternate sample-and-hold circuit scheme is adopted in this design. The proposed tactile sensor is designed and fabricated in a 0.5-μm CMOS (Complementary metal oxide semiconductor)mixed-signal process with a 16 × 16 array and a total chip area of 1.9 × 1.9 cm2. This chip consumes 33.5 mW from a 5 V supply. The measurement results showed that the signal-to-noise and distortion rate (SNDR) was 65.2894 dB and that the effective number of bits (ENoB) was 10.553 dB. Moreover, this sensor could achieve a pressure measurement range of 0.002–0.5 N with a resolution of 0.4 mN.

Chemoresistive Sensor Readout Circuit Design for Detecting Gases with Slow Response Time Characteristics.

Based on an analysis of the signal characteristics of gas sensors, this work presents a chemoresistive sensor readout circuit design for detecting gases with slow response time characteristics. The proposed readout circuit directly generates a reference voltage corresponding to the initial value of the gas sensor and extracts only the amount of gas concentration change in the sensor. Because the proposed readout circuit can adaptively regenerate the suitable reference voltage under various changing ambient conditions, it can alleviate the variation in output values at the same gas concentration caused by non-uniformities among gas sensors. Furthermore, this readout circuit effectively eliminates the initial value shifts due to the poor reproducibility of the gas sensor itself without requiring complex digital signal calibrations. This work focuses on a commercially viable readout circuit structure that can effectively obtain slow response gas information without requiring a large capacitor. The proposed readout circuit operation was verified by simulations using spectre in cadence simulation software. It was then implemented on a printed circuit board with discrete components to confirm the effectiveness with existing gas sensor systems and its commercial viability.

Capacitive sensor readout circuit based on sample and hold method

This paper presents a capacitive sensor readout circuit using sample and hold method. The proposed readout circuit is used to convert capacitance from sensor to DC (direct current) voltage output. The basic structure of readout circuit consists of the pulse generator circuit, differentiator circuit, amplifier circuit, monostable I circuit, monostable II circuit, and sample and hold circuit. The proposed technique is based on the change of time constant from differentiator circuit corresponding to the measurement capacitance. The sample and hold circuit is used for sampling output voltage from differentiator circuit. The output voltage of the proposed readout circuit is proportional to measurement capacitance. The standard capacitors with different capacitance are used to test the proposed converter performance. Experimental results show that the proposed readout circuit can convert measurement capacitance to output voltage with satisfied values, good linearity and high sensitivity.

Machine Learning on FPGA for Robust ${\rm {Si}}_{3}{\rm {N}}_{4}$-Gate ISFET pH Sensor in Industrial IoT Applications

This article presents performance enhancement of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\rm {Si}}_{3}{\rm {N}}_{4}$</tex-math></inline-formula> -gate ion-sensitive field-effect transistor based pH sensor using machine learning (ML) techniques. A robust SPICE macromodel is developed using experimental data, which incorporates intrinsic temperature and temporal characteristics of the device, which is further used in sensor readout circuit (ROIC), which shows a nonideal temperature and time dependence in the voltage output. To make the device robust to the critical drifts, we exploit six state-of-the-art ML models, which are trained using the data generated from ROIC for a wide range of pH, temperature, and temporal conditions. Thorough comparison between ML models shows random forest outperforms other models for drift compensation task. This work also shows a preliminary time series classification task. The ML models are implemented on a Xilinx PYNQ-Z1 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board to validate the performance in power and memory-restricted environment, crucial for IoT applications. A parameter, implementation factor is defined to evaluate best ML model for IoT deployment using FPGA/MCU hardware implementation. The significantly lower power consumption of FPGA board as compared to CPU with no noticeable performance drop is a pointer to the future of robust pH sensors used in industrial and remote IoT applications.

Active pixel sensor readout circuit using indium–tin–zinc-oxide thin-film transistors for image sensor applications

In this study, we describe an active pixel sensor (APS) readout circuit using indium–tin–zinc-oxide (ITZO) thin-film transistors (TFTs). The APS readout circuit with a pixel size of 90 μm was fabricated using ITZO TFTs with a channel length of 2 μm, and its performance was experimentally evaluated. The ITZO TFTs were found to have good low-frequency noise performance with an extracted Hooge’s parameter (α H) of 3.5 × 10−3, and the APS exhibits a high DC voltage gain of ∼0.81 with satisfactory linearity in a wide output voltage range of ∼6.4 V as well as manageable response times of less than 15 μs. The obtained results show the potential of our APS circuits to be applied to TFT-based image sensors with enhanced image quality.

High-performance 1-10 THz integrating sphere.

The SPICA far-infrared instrument (SAFARI), one of instruments of the space infrared telescope for cosmology and astrophysics, requires a calibration source assembly to calibrate the transition edge sensor readout circuits. A high-performance integrating sphere working at SAFARI wavelength (34-230 µm) is essential. A novel process for preparing terahertz integrating spheres was developed. The aluminum surfaces after sandblasting, wet-etching, and gold plating processes demonstrate rough morphology but high reflectance of 0.91 in 1-10 THz. The spatial distribution of the measured output power excellently agrees with the numerical simulation results based on the assumption of uniform surface radiation at the output port.

Temperature and Pressure Composite Measurement System Based on Wireless Passive LC Sensor

In this article, we proposed a measurement system that can simultaneously measure temperature and pressure. By analyzing several existing measurement methods of the sensor, we determined that the resonance frequency and $S_{11}$ (reflection coefficient) amplitude of the sensor readout system should be measured when the resonance frequency of the sensor up to a hundred megahertz or even gigahertz and when the sensor works in ultrahigh temperature environment. In addition, we designed a simple and accurate sensor readout circuit and an LC temperature–pressure sensor. By analyzing the resonance frequency and the amplitude of $S_{11}$ , temperature and pressure were measured simultaneously with a single LC circuit. Since the analysis of the whole nonlinear system of sensors is complex, we divide the entire nonlinear system into several linear systems superposition. By analyzing the interference between temperature and pressure, we further optimized the measurement method. The relative errors of the temperature measurements in the range of 25 °C–300 °C and 300 °C–1000 °C were only 2.89% and 1.25%, respectively. From 25 °C to 300 °C and 300 °C to 1000 °C, the average relative errors of pressure measurement were only 4.07% and 4.74%, respectively. Besides, the proposed method can also be widely used in the measurement of LC multiparameter sensors.

A Two-Electrode, Double-Pulsed Sensor Readout Circuit for Cardiac Troponin I Measurement

This paper presents a pulse-stimulus sensor readout circuit for use in cardiovascular disease examinations. The sensor is based on a gold nanoparticle plate with an antibody post-modification. The proposed system utilizes gated pulses to detect the biomarker Cardiac Troponin I in an ionic solution. The characteristic of the electrostatic double-layer capacitor generated by the analyte is related to the concentration of Cardiac Troponin I in the solvent. After sensing by the transistor, a current-to-frequency converter (I-to-F) and delay-line-based time-to-digital converter (TDC) convert the information into a series of digital codes for further analysis. The design is fabricated in a 0.18-μm standard CMOS process. The chip occupies an area of 0.92 mm2 and consumes 125 μW. In the measurements, the proposed circuit achieved a 1.77 Hz/pg-mL sensitivity and 72.43 dB dynamic range.

A high performance integrated readout circuit for wavefront sensors

This work presents an integrated pixel topology that promises to offer superior performance in a Hartmann–Shack Wavefront Sensor (WFS) with an orthogonal array of Quad Cells serving as Position-Sensitive Detectors. The readout integrated circuit for each photodiode is fully compliant to any standard CMOS microelectronics technology and is advantageously tolerant to high background illumination levels whereas maintaining both high linearity and high sensitivity. To assess the operation of this pixel on the focal-plane array of the WFS, we developed a computational platform encompassing a full detection chain comprising wavefront sampling, photodetection, electronic circuitry and wavefront reconstruction. It couples an algorithm written in C to SPICE (Simulated Program with Integrated Circuits Emphasis). The platform is technology agnostic and flexible, enabling easy modification to represent different detection or reconstruction methods. The results obtained with the proposed pixel have been compared to those obtained with a conventional pixel in CMOS image sensor.