A low-power, low-cost switched-capacitor circuit for differential capacitive microsensors

This paper presents a novel circuit topology to be used with a differential capacitive microsensor. Adopting sampling switches and utilizing modified digital blocks has resulted in a remarkably compact and low-power design. The high linearity in conversion of charge to voltage and the wide range applicability of proposed topology satisfies the design criteria for many applications. The proposed topology has been designed and laid out in a standard 0.35 μm CMOS technology from Austria Microsystems. This circuit dissipates 41 μW power when biased with ±1.65 V DC. Moreover, small required area for fabrication that is 0.06 mm² of silicon area on a chip results low production cost.