A compact sensor readout circuit with combined temperature, capacitance and voltage sensing functionality

This paper presents an area- and energy-efficient sensor readout circuit, which can precisely digitize temperature, capacitance and voltage. The three modes use only on-chip references and employ a shared zoom ADC based on SAR and ΔΣ conversion to save die area. Measurements on 24 samples from a single wafer show a temperature inaccuracy of ±0.2 °C (3σ) over the military temperature range (−55°C to 125°C). The voltage sensing shows an inaccuracy of ±0.5%. The sensor also offers 18.7-ENOB capacitance-to-digital conversion, which handles up to 3.8 pF capacitance with a 0.76 pJ/conv.-step energy-efficiency FoM. It occupies 0.33 mm in a 0.16 μm CMOS process and draws 4.6 μA current from a 1.8 V supply.