Design considerations and approaches for sensor interface circuits in smart sensor microsystems

With the future filled with a trillion sensors on the way, there is a large variety in the forms of smart sensor microsystems for different applications existing or emerging. The applications of smart sensor microsystems and corresponding use scenarios define important design requirements of sensor interface circuits such as physical parameters to sense, minimum detection limit, bandwidth, dynamic range, and sensing duty cycle. In this paper, we investigate how these application-dependent requirements lead to different design approaches for the sensor interface circuit, which is one of most essential parts in the smart sensor microsystem.