A 141- $\mu$ W High-Voltage MEMS Gyroscope Drive Interface Circuit Based on Flying Capacitors

Electronic readout circuits for microelectromechanical gyroscopes suffer from high power consumption caused by the electrostatic sensor actuation with signals above the standard chip supply voltage. This paper presents an electronic circuit principle and implementation, which exploits the fact that ac actuation signals in the range of the chip supply voltage are sufficient, if they are combined with a high-voltage (HV) dc biasing. Therefore, the developed system performs the generation of the time-varying signal in the low-voltage domain and uses precharged flying capacitors to efficiently add a high dc biasing voltage. The circuit consists of a closed-loop low ripple charge pump, low-voltage driver amplifier, and an HV common frame biasing amplifier. The fully on-chip implementation occupies an area of 0.58 mm
²
and reduces the power consumption to 141 μW.