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.