A 828μW 1.8V 80dB dynamic-range readout interface for a MEMS capacitive microphone

A CMOS interface for a piston-type MEMS capacitive microphone is presented. It performs a capacitance-to-voltage conversion by bootstrapping the sensor through a voltage pre-amplifier, feeding a third-order sigma-delta modulator. The bootstrapping performs active parasitic compensation, improving the readout sensitivity by ~12 dB. The total current consumption is 460 uA at 1.8 V-supply. The digital output achieves 80 dBA-DR, with 63 dBA peak-SNR, using 0.35 um 2P/4M CMOS technology. The paper includes electrical and acoustic measurement results for the interface.