FPGA-based direct resistance and capacitance measurements

This paper presents a system that allows the measurement of some electrical parameters (namely resistance and capacitance) to be carried out through the direct connection of the target component to an FPGA, without the need for an analog-to-digital converter or excitation circuits. The system is based on a measurement method previously described in the literature, in which sensors are directly connected to microcontrollers. The increasing number of application domains of FPGAs makes it interesting to develop new functional blocks for these devices. In addition, advantage can be taken from the features of currently available FPGAs to deal with some practical limitations of the microcontroller-based solution, for instance by adaptively defining the measurement range. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed system.