Design of a bidirectional front-end for resonating sensors
Abstract
In the last decades, the use of electronic sensors in portable applications became increasingly common. They provide a simple way to study processes, monitor envi-ronment conditions or to provide hazard systems. In order to interpret the signals generated by these sensors correctly, an electronic Front-End must be used to elab-orate and translate them into a signal understood by a Processing Unit.
This thesis presents the design of a novel electronic Front-End for resonating sensors, characterized by compactness and simplicity. This Front-End is a purely analog system based on a bidirectional pseudo floating gate amplifier (PFGA). Given the low number of MOSFETs used to implement this amplifier, it is very simple, compact and with potentially low power dissipation. This document exploits the possibility to use the bidirectional behavior of the PFGA to implement an electronic Front-End for resonating sensors. Furthermore, a prototype of a bidirectional PFGA has been realized using commercial component CD4007UBE. A full characterization of this front-end has been developed in this work, from the modeling to the mea-surements on full functioning prototype. Additional features have been added to the basic structure to improve the front-end such as a control electronic system to lower the power consumption of the amplifier and a technique to control its band-width. In conclusion, a comparison with the state of the art shows that the power consumption is comparable with other structures described in the literature but it benefits of a smaller occupation of area.
Has parts
L. Marchetti, A. Romi, Y. Berg, O. Mirmotahari and M. Azadmehr, ”A discrete implementation of a bidirectional circuit for actuation and read-out of resonating sensors,” 2016 International Conference on Design and Technology of Integrated Sys-tems in Nanoscale Era (DTIS), Istanbul, 2016, pp. 1-5. doi: 10.1109/DTIS.2016.7483896L. Marchetti, Y. Berg, O. Mirmotahari and M. Azadmehr, ”Bidirectional front-end for piezoelectric resonator,” 2016 IEEE 13th International Conference on Network-ing, Sensing, and Control (ICNSC), Mexico City, 2016, pp. 1-4. doi: 10.1109/IC-NSC.2016.7479028
L. Marchetti, Y. Berg and M. Azadmehr, ”An autozeroing inverter based front-end for resonating sensors,” 2017 12th International Conference on Design & Technology of Integrated Systems In Nanoscale Era (DTIS), Palma de Mallorca, 2017, pp. 1-5. doi: 10.1109/DTIS.2017.7930154
L. Marchetti, Y. Berg, O. Mirmotahari and M. Azadmehr, ”A control system for a low power bidirectional front-end for resonating sensors,” 2017 IEEE 14th Inter-national Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control (ICNSC), Calabria, Italy, 2017, pp. 322-326 . doi: 10.1109/ICNSC.2017.8000112
L. Marchetti, Y. Berg and M. Azadmehr, ”A Bidirectional Front-End with Band-width Control for Actuation and Read-Out of MEMS Resonating Sensors,” 2017 24th International Conference Mixed Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (MIXDES), Bydgoszcz, 2017
L. Marchetti, Y. Berg and M. Azadmehr, ”Analysis of the Effect of Channel Leakage on Design, Characterization and Modelling of a high voltage Pseudo-Floating Gate Sensor-Front-End”, accepeted in Electronics MDPI journal
L. Marchetti, Y. Berg and M. Azadmehr, ”Design and Modelling of a Bidirectional Front-End for Resonating Sensors based on Pseudo Floating Gate Amplifier”, ac-cepted in Electronics MDPI journal
M. Azadmehr, L. Marchetti, Y. Berg ”A Low Power Voltage Similarity Circuit,” 2017 IEEE 50th International Symposium of Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), Balti-more, 2017
M. Azadmehr, L. Marchetti, Y. Berg, ”A Virtual Wheatstone Bridge Front-End for Resistive Sensors,” 2017 IEEE 14th International Conference on Networking, Sens-ing, and Control (ICNSC), Calabria, 2017