Measurement techniques for smart sensor interfaces implemented in CMOS technology

The paper reviews how the application of appropriate measurement and signal-processing techniques can improve the accuracy of smart sensor systems. The smart sensor systems under consideration consist of a number of multiplexed sensor elements, sensor-specific front-ends, modifiers and a microcontroller or a digital signal processor (DSP). It is shown that in an overall design approach the availability of memory and calculation functions enables the application of powerful measurement methods, such as chopping, auto calibration, dynamic element matching and dynamic division. It is shown, that these techniques are rather suited for implementation in CMOS integrated circuits, where they can solve the traditional problems caused by component mismatching and 1/f noise.