Multi-purpose interface for both capacitive and piezoelectric sensors

Sensor signal processing represents a very important tool to improve dramatically advance sensor performance. The design of a new low-cost microelectronic interface to process signals generated by both capacitive and piezoelectric sensors is presented and analyzed in this paper. The basic strategies developed in this project has previously been encountered during the development of dedicated piezoelectric analog processing circuitries for robotic applications. The authors are now trying to extend these design criteria and accuracy evaluation processes to a more general class of sensors in order to establish useful procedures able to optimize advanced sensor development using microelectronic technologies