One of the key requirements in the design of wireless sensor nodes and miniature biomedical devices is energy efficiency. For a sensor node, which is a sensor and readout circuit, to survive on limited energy sources such as a battery or harvested energy, its energy consumption should be minimized. Capacitive sensors are candidates for use in energy-constrained applications, as they do not consume static power and can be used in a wide range of applications to measure different physical, chemical or biological quantities. However, the energy consumption is dominated by the capacitive interface circuit, i.e. the capacitance-to-digital converter (CDC). Several energy-efficient CDC architectures are introduced in this dissertation to meet the demand for high resolution and energy efficiency in smart capacitive sensors. First, we propose an energy-efficient CDC based on a differential successive-approximation data converter. The proposed differential CDC employs an energy-efficient operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) based on an inverter. A wide capacitance range with fine absolute resolution is implemented in the proposed coarse-fine DAC architecture which saves 89% of silicon area. The proposed CDC achieves an energy efficiency figure-of-merit (FOM) of 45.8fJ/step, which is the best reported energy efficiency to date. Second, we propose an energy efficient CDC for high-precision capacitive resolution by using oversampling and noise shaping. The proposed CDC achieves 150 aF absolute resolution and an energy efficiency FOM of 187fJ/conversion-step which outperforms state of the art high-precision differential CDCs. In the third and last part, we propose an in-vitro cancer diagnostic biosensor-CMOS platform for low-power, rapid detection, and low cost. The introduced platform is the first to demonstrate the ability to screen and quantify the spermidine/spermine N1 acetyltransferase (SSAT) enzyme which reveals the presence of early-stage cancer, on the surface of a capacitive biosensor. This platform, which is a biosensor combined with a highly energy-efficient digital CDC, is implemented and fabricated in a CMOS technology and can sense and convert the capacitance value from the biosensor to a digital word in an energy efficient way. The platform achieves an ultra-low power consumption: four orders of magnitude less than the state-of-the-art biosensor-CMOS platforms.

This thesis presents the development of high resolution, wide dynamic range sigma-delta type readout circuits for capacitive MEMS accelerometers. Designed readout circuit employs fully differential closed loop structure with digital output, achieving high oversampling ratio and high resolution. The simulations of the readout circuit together with the accelerometer sensor are performed using the models constructed in Cadence and Matlab Simulink environments. The simulations verified the stability and proper operation of the accelerometer system. The sigma-delta readout circuit is implemented using XFab 0.6 &micro / m CMOS process. Readout circuit is combined with Silicon-On-Glass (SOG) and Dissolved Wafer Process (DWP) accelerometers. Both open loop and closed loop tests of the accelerometer system are performed. Open loop test results showed high sensitivity up to 8.1 V/g and low noise level of 4.8 &micro / g/&amp / #61654 / Hz. Closed loop circuit is implemented on a PCB together with the external filtering and decimation electronics, providing 16-bit digital output at 800 Hz sampling rate. High acceleration tests showed &plusmn / 18.5 g of linear acceleration range with high linearity, using DWP accelerometers. The noise tests in closed loop mode are performed using Allan variance technique, by acquiring the digital data. Allan variance tests provided 86 &micro / g/&amp / #61654 / Hz of noise level and 74 &micro / g of bias drift. Temperature sensitivity tests of the readout circuit in closed loop mode is also performed, which resulted in 44 mg/&ordm / C of temperature dependency. Two different types of new adaptive sigma-delta readout circuits are designed in order to improve the resolution of the systems by higher frequency operation. The two circuits both change the acceleration range of operation of the system, according to the level of acceleration. One of the adaptive circuits uses variation of feedback time, while the other circuit uses multi-bit feedback method. The simulation results showed micro-g level noise in closed loop mode without the addition of the mechanical noise of the sensor.

MEMS accelerometers are quickly approaching navigation grade performance and navigation market for MEMS accelerometer systems are expected to grow in the recent years. Compared to conventional accelerometers, these micromachined sensors are smaller and more durable but are generally worse in terms of noise and dynamic range performance. Since MEMS accelerometers are already dominant in the tactical and consumer electronics market, as they are in all modern smart phones today, there is significant demand for MEMS accelerometers that can reach navigation grade performance without significantly altering the developed process technologies. This research aims to improve the performance of previously fabricated and well-known MEMS capacitive closed loop &Sigma / &Delta / accelerometer systems to navigation grade performance levels. This goal will be achieved by reducing accelerometer noise level through significant changes in the system architecture and implementation of a new electronic interface readout ASIC. A flexible fourth order &Sigma / &Delta / modulator was chosen as the implementation of the electro-mechanical closed loop system, and the burden of noise shaping in the modulator was shifted from the mechanical sensor to the programmable electronic readout. A novel operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) was also designed for circuit implementation of the electronic interface readout. Design and fabrication of the readout was done in a standard 0.35 &micro / m CMOS technology. With the newly designed and fabricated readout, single-axis accelerometers were implemented and tested for performance levels in 1g range. The implemented system achieves 5.95 &micro / g/sqrt Hz, 6.4 &micro / g bias drift, 131.7 dB dynamic range and up to 37.2 g full scale range with previously fabricated dissolved epitaxial wafer process (DEWP) accelerometers in METU MEMS facilities. Compared to a previous implementation with the same accelerometer element reporting 153 &micro / g/sqrtHz, 50 &micro / g bias drift, 106.8 dB dynamic range and 33.5 g full scale range / this research reports a 25 fold improvement in noise, 24 dB improvement in dynamic range and removal of the deadzone region.

No description available.

<div> Recent advancements of health monitoring sensing technologies are enabling plethora of new applications in a variety of biomedical areas. In this work, we present a new sensing technology that enables a fully autonomous monitoring of urinary tract infection (UTI). UTI is the second most common infection in the human body caused by bacterial pathogens, and costs millions of dollars each year to the patients and the health care industry. UTI is easily treatable using antibiotics if identified in early stages. However, when early stage identification is missed, UTI can be a major source of serious complications such as ascending infections, loss of kidney function, bacteremia, and sepsis. Unfortunately, the limitations of existing UTI monitoring technologies such as high cost, time-intensive sample preparation, and relatively high false alarm rate prohibit reliable detection of UTI in early stages. The problem becomes more serious in certain patient groups such as infants and geriatric patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases, who have difficulties in realizing the symptoms and communicating the symptoms with their caregivers. In addition to the aforementioned difficulties, the fact that UTI is often asymptomatic makes early stage identifications quite challenging, and the reliable monitoring and detection of UTI in early stages remain as a serious problem.</div><div> To address these issues, we propose a diaper-embedded, self-powered, and fully autonomous UTI monitoring sensor module that enables autonomous monitoring and detection of UTI in early stages with minimal effort. The sensor module consists of a paper-based colorimetric nitrite sensor, urine-activated batteries, a boost dc-dc converter, a low-power sensor interface utilizing pulse width modulation, a Bluetooth low energy module for wireless transmission, and a software performing calibration at run-time. </div><div> To further optimize the sensor module, a new fully integrated DC-DC converter with low-profile and low ripple is developed. The proposed DC-DC converter maintains an extremely low level of output voltage ripples in the face of different battery output voltages, which is crucial for realizing low-noise sensor interfaces. Since the DC-DC converter is a part of a module embedded into a diaper, it is highly desirable for the DC-DC converter to have a small physical form factor in both area and height. To address this issue, the proposed DC-DC converter adopts a new charge recycling technique that enables a fully integrated design without utilizing any off-chip components. In addition, the DC-DC converter utilizes sub-module sharing techniques – multiple modules share a voltage buffer and a recycle capacitor to reduce power consumption and save chip area. The DC-DC converter provides a regulated voltage of 1.2V and achieves a maximum efficiency of 80% with a 300ohm load resistance. The output voltage ripple is in the range of 19.6mV to 26.6mV for an input voltage ranging from 0.66 to 0.86V.<br></div>

With the proliferation of industries world-wide, there is a growing need and interest in sensing and monitoring environmental pollutants and monitoring the concentration of chemicals/gases in industrial process control. There is also an increasing demand for chemical sensors in other applications such as home security, breath analysis and food processing. Design and development of metal-oxide based gas sensor system is reported in this thesis. The system consists of three components viz. micro heater(which aids inheating the sensor film to required temperatures), CMOS ASIC (the sensor interface circuit) and the thin film transducer(a semiconducting metal oxide thin film whose resistance changes with the concentration of the target gas). Microheaters were realized through PolyMUMPs process. Thermal characterization of surface-micromachined microheaters is carried out from their dynamic response to electrothermal excitations. An electrical equivalent circuit model is developed for the thermo-mechanical system. The mechanical parameters are extracted from the frequency response obtained using a Laser Doppler Vibrometer. The resonant frequencies of the microheaters are measured and compared with FEM simulations. The thermal time constants are obtained from the electrical equivalent model by fitting the model response to the measured frequency response. Microheaters with an active area of140m × 140m have been realized on two different layers(poly-1 andpoly-2) with two different air-gaps (2m and 2.75m). The effective time constants, combining thermal and mechanical responses, are intherangeof0.13msto0.22msforheatersonpoly-1,and1.9s to0.15ms for microheaters on poly-2 layer. The thermal time constants of the best microheaters are in the range of a few s, thus making them suitable for sensor applications that need faster thermal response. The mechanical deformation of the microheaters subjected to an electrothermal excitation, due to thermal stress, is also analyzed using lensless in-line digital holographic microscopy (DHM). The numerically reconstructed holographic images of the micro-heaters clearly indicate the regions under high stress. Double exposure method has been used to obtain the quantitative measurements of the deformations, from the phase analysis of the hologram fringes. The measured deformations correlate well with the theoretical values predicted by a thermo-mechanical analytical model. The results show that lensless in-line DHM with Fourier analysis is an effective method for evaluating the thermo-mechanical characteristics of MEMS components. A sensor interface circuit comprising a resistance-to-time period converter as the front-end circuit and a proportional temperature controller to control the microheater temperature is designed and realized in 130nm UMC CMOS technology. The impact of biasing the transistors in subthreshold versus saturation conditions on analog circuit performance is systematically analyzed. A cascode current mirror, designed in 130nm CMOS technology, is biased in subthreshold and saturation regions and its performance has been analyzed through rigorous analytical modeling. The analytical results have been validated with SPICE simulations. It is demonstrated that the subthreshold operation provides better performance in terms of linearity, power, area, output impedance and tolerance to temperature variation, making it a preferable option for applications such as signal conditioning circuitry for environmental sensors. On the other hand, biasing the circuit in saturation is preferable for applications like transceivers and data converters where high bandwidth, SNR and low sensitivity to process variations are the key requirements. Based on this analysis, a sensor interface circuit has been prototyped for resistance measurement on 130nm CMOS technology, using subthreshold cascode current mirrors as the key building blocks. This current mirror results in 14X lower power compared to above-threshold operation. The interface circuit spans 5 orders of magnitude of resistance, and consumes an ultra low power of 326W. A proportional temperature controller with an integrated on-chip power MOSFET is also realized on the same chip for heating and temperature control of microheaters. The microheater is reused as temperature sensor. The entire circuit works with 1.2V supply, except the power MOSFET and the heater driver circuit, which operate with 3.3V supply. ZnO, a semiconducting metal-oxide, is used as the sensing material. Thin films of ZnO are spin-coated over insulating substrates using sol-gel processing technique. Gold pads deposited over the sensing film act as electrodes. The sensor film is characterized at different temperatures for its sensitivity to ethanol. A peak response of 14% change in resistance is observed for 5ppm ethanol, at a working temperature of 275◦C.

In a process monitoring/control applications tens to thousands of sensors are used for monitoring system parameters. To achieve overall system goals, their reliable performance is critical. Generally a sensor’s output signal is too small or too noisy and may not be compatible with the input requirements of a Data Acquisition System. The sensor is interfaced to Data Acquisition System, through cabling, junction boxes and Interface Electronics like excitation circuitry, multiplexers, signal-conditioning circuitry etc. An interface or signal conditioning circuit does impedance matching, filtering, multiplexing, pre-amplification, amplification and digitization to make the sensor’s output signal compatible with the Data Acquisition System. Conventional Signal Conditioning includes Multiplexers, Anti aliasing filters, Operational Amplifier, Instrumentation Amplifiers, Isolation Amplifiers and Charge Preamplifiers etc. Operational Amplifiers e.g. voltage followers with High input impedance and low output impedance are used for impedance matching between the sensor and processing electronics. Anti aliasing filters remove noise from the sensor’s output signal. Normally the sensor is located away from the processing electronics and data is transmitted through wires/cables. During transmission, interference from external fields’ especially strong Audio Frequency, Radio Frequency and 50Hz power line fields affects the sensor’s output signal. To minimize the effect of external field twisted pair shielded cables are used. Amplifiers with Differential input configuration are used to suppress the effect of interfering signals. Differential input Instrumentation Amplifiers with High input impedance, high CMRR; are most widely employed. Isolation Amplifiers isolate the input and output circuits by an extremely high impedance. Galvanic, optical isolations are most common. The conditioned data is transmitted to Data Acquisition System (DAS) and at the DAS the signal is multiplexed, filtered and digitized using Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs), followed by Digital Filtering and processing. For Control applications, the processed data is converted back to analog form using Digital to Analog Converters (DACs) for interfacing to external world. The transmission distance varies from tens of centimeters to few meters. Depending upon the distance twisted pair cables, IR transmission and Optical transmission is employed. During transmission, the data is prone to interferences from EMI, EMC, Noise and Signal to Noise ratio (SNR) degradation with distance. This affects the reliability of the system and increases the overall system cost. To eliminate the effects due to the environmental disturbances during transmission and to maintain signal integrity, it is preferred to have a unique and compact solution for each sensor where signal conditioning (excitation, filtering, amplification, compensation and digitization) is carried out and digital data can be transmitted to Data Acquisition System. Here each sensor has its own signal conditioning module. Directly interfacing sensors with micro controller yields simple and compact design solutions. Direct Sensor interface Technology (DSiT) is one of the state of the art technologies for sensor interfaces where an unconditioned, uncompensated, raw output signals from sensors are interfaced directly to a single-chip solution. The sensors’ output are multiplexed using Multiplexer; Amplified using Programmable Gain Amplifier (PGA), digitized using ADC, filtered using Digital Filters and transmitted using Digital Interfaces (SPI, I2C, UART) in a single chip. DSiT scheme incorporates all the elements necessary in an instrumentation system creating a balanced combination of features, to create truly intelligent sensor systems. The sensors are interfaced directly to a single DSiT chip, without any additional circuitry and the direct digital data transmission is achieved with the help of Digital Interfaces SPI, UART, SMBus/I2C. As this involves onchip signal conditioning and digital data transmission, expenditure on additional signal conditioning circuitry, analog interfaces for analog data transmission, separate Analog to Digital Converter for each sensor is reduced. This reduces the overall system cost and as the count of discrete components is reduced the system reliability is improved. In addition, as the data is transmitted digitally the effects of noise, S/N degradation and electromagnetic interferences are eliminated. The accuracy level achieved is sufficiently good for monitoring and control applications. In Launch Vehicles/Satellites number of sensors are used for performance evaluation, monitoring and control purposes. Harnessing, signal conditioning of the sensors’ output and onboard processing of the sensor data is carried out individually for each sensor. Implementation of the DSiT system will reduce the total weight of the launch vehicles and satellites, resulting in reduced overall system cost, increased reliability and reduced onboard processing overhead. In addition, the reduction in weight allows incorporation of larger payloads/ more propellant loading in payloads which increases the life of the Satellites. As it is compact, it can be readily used for facility parameter measurements during the ground testing of liquid engines and stages at LPSC/ISRO. Implementation of DSiT for facility parameter measurements will reduce the cabling cost and improve the reliability of the chain.

No description available.

Sensor interfaces are needed to communicate the measured real-world analog values to the base¬band digital processor. They are dominated by the presence of high accuracy, high resolution analog to digital converters (ADC) in the backend. On most occasions, sensing is limited to small range measurements and low-modulation sensors where the complete dynamic range of ADC is not utilized. Designing a subsystem that integrates the sensor and the interface circuit and that works with a low resolution ADC requiring a small die-area is a challenge. In this work, we present a CMOS based area efficient, integrated sensor interface for applications like capacitance, temperature and dielectric-constant measurement. In addition, potential applica-tions for this work are in Cognitive Radios, Software Defined Radios, Capacitance Sensors, and location monitoring. The key contributions in the thesis are: 1 High Sensitivity Frequency-domain CMOS Capacitance Interface: A frequency domain capacitance interface system is proposed for a femto-farad capacitance measurement. In this technique, a ring oscillator circuit is used to generate a change in time period, due to a change in the sensor capacitance. The time-period difference of two such oscillators is compared and is read-out using a phase frequency detector and a charge pump. The output voltage of the system, is proportional to the change in the input sensor capacitance. It exhibits a maximum sensitivity of 8.1 mV/fF across a 300 fF capacitance range. 2 Sensitivity Enhancement for capacitance sensor: The sensitivity of an oscillator-based differential capacitance sensor has been improved by proposing a novel frequency domain capacitance-to-voltage (FDC) measurement technique. The capacitance sensor interface system is fabricated in a 130-nm CMOS technology with an active area of 0.17mm2 . It exhibits a maximum sensitivity of 244.8 mV/fF and a measurement resolution of 13 aF in a 10-100 fF measurement range, with a 10 pF nominal sensor capacitance and an 8-bit ADC. 3 Frequency to Digital Converter for Time/Distance measurement: A new architecture for a Vernier-based frequency-to-digital converter (VFDC) for location monitoring is pre¬sented, in which, a time interval measurement is performed with a frequency domain approach. Location monitoring is a common problem for many mobile robotic applica¬tions covering various domains, such as industrial automation, manipulation in difficult areas, rescue operations, environment exploration and monitoring, smart environments and buildings, robotic home appliances, space exploration and probing. The proposed architecture employs a new injection-locked ring oscillator (ILR) as the clock source. The proposed ILR oscillator does not need complex calibration procedures, usually required by Phase Locked Loop (PLL) based oscillators in Vernier-based time-to-digital convert¬ers. It consumes 14.4 µW and 1.15 mW from 0.4 V and 1.2 V supplies, respectively. The proposed VFDC thus achieves a large detectable range, fine time resolution, small die size and low power consumption simultaneously. The measured time-difference error is less than 50 ps at 1.2 V, enabling a resolution of 3 mm/kHz frequency shift. 4 A bio-sensor array for dielectric constant measurement: A CMOS on-chip sensor is presented to measure the dielectric constant of organic chemicals. The dielectric constant of these chemicals is measured using the oscillation frequency shift of a current controlled os¬cillator (CCO) upon the change of the sensor capacitance when exposed to the liquid. The CCO is embedded in an open-loop frequency synthesizer to convert the frequency change into voltage, which can be digitized using an off-chip analog-to-digital converter. The dielectric constant is then estimated using a detection procedure including the calibration of the sensor. 5 Integrated Temperature Sensor for thermal management: An integrated analog temper¬ature sensor which operates with simple, low-cost one-point calibration is proposed. A frequency domain technique to measure the on-chip silicon surface temperature, was used to measure the effects of temperature on the stability of a frequency synthesizer. The temperature to voltage conversion is achieved in two steps i.e. temperature to frequency, followed by frequency to voltage conversion. The output voltage can be used to com¬pensate the temperature dependent errors in the high frequency circuits, thereby reduc¬ing the performance degradation due to thermal gradient. Furthermore, a temperature measurement-based on-chip self test technique to measure the 3 dB bandwidth and the central frequency of common radio frequency circuits, was developed. This technique shows promise in performing online monitoring and temperature compensation of RF circuits.

This research focuses on developing sensors for properties of aerodynamic interest (i.e., flow and pressure) based on low-cost polymeric materials and simple fabrication processes. Such sensors can be fabricated in large arrays, covering the surface of airfoils typically used in unmanned vehicles, allowing for the detection of flow separation. This in turn potentially enables, through the use of closed-loop control, an expansion of the flight envelope of these vehicles. A key advance is compensation for the typically inferior performance of these low cost materials through both careful design as well as new readout methods that reduce drift, namely a readout methodology based on aeroelastic flutter. An all-polymer micromachined piezoresistive flow sensor is fabricated, based on a flexible polyimide substrate and an elastomeric piezoresistive composite material. The flow sensor comprises a cantilever that is extended into the embedding flow; flow-induced stress on the cantilever is sensed through the piezoresistive composite material. Increasing the sensitivity of the sensor is achieved by either utilizing a long single-cantilever beam or using a dual-cantilever beam supporting a flap extending into the flow. In the latter case, the sensor demonstrates increased sensitivity with a reduced cantilever length. The increase in sensitivity helps to reduce sensor drift, which in turn is further reduced by a new measurement method, the vibration amplitude measurement method. In this drift reduction measurement method, the flow-induced vibration amplitude of the sensor structure (i.e., the amplitude of the aeroelastic flutter induced by the flow), instead of the absolute value of cantilever deflection, is measured in order to find the flow rate. Measurement of this relative resistance change instead of the absolute resistance in the piezoresistor rejects common-mode drift and greatly reduces overall drift. Experimental results verify the expected drift reduction. Sensor drift is also reduced when the elastomeric piezoresistive material is replaced by a Pt thin film piezoresistor. Development of pressure sensors based on polymers proceeds by encapsulating a reference cavity within a multilayer polymer structure and forming capacitor plates on the polymeric membranes encapsulating the cavity. Measuring the capacitance change induced by changes in the embedding pressure (which cause changes in the positions of the bounding polymeric membranes) enables calculation of the pressure. The use of polymeric membranes requires understanding the leakage rate of gas into the reference cavity, which is a source of pressure drift. Developing a polymer-based pressure sensor that solves the problem of sensor drift as a result of gas permeation entails the fabrication of a silicon pressure reference cavity embedded in the polymer substrate, which results in a more hermetic and lower drift sensor while preserving the flexibility of the embedding polymer. Both wired and wireless versions of pressure and flow sensors of these types were developed and characterized. Further, the sensors were characterized on airfoils and their performance in a wind tunnel was determined.