Review and Analysis of Instrumentation Amplifier for IoT Applications

Instrumentation amplifiers (IAs) are essential circuit blocks for many precision sensor readouts. Particularly, for IoT applications, IAs used in the sensing nodes should be of low-cost (no trimming) and energy-efficient, which is however still a challenge. As a design guidance, this paper reviewed the major IA topologies and circuit techniques proposed in the last two decades. Different trade-offs, including gain accuracy, energy consumption, noise, etc. are discussed when designing IAs for IoT applications. Meanwhile, the startup issue, which wastes a lot energy while is not considered in most IA design is raised in this paper.