Ultra Low Power Capacitive Sensor Interfaces

This book describes ultra low power capacitive sensor interfaces, and presents the realization of a very low power generic sensor interface chip that is adaptable to a broad range of capacitive sensors. The book opens by reviewing important design aspects for autonomous sensor systems, discusses different building blocks, and presents the modular architecture for the generic sensor interface chip. Finally, the generic sensor interface chip is shown in state-of-the-art applications.

This book is based on the 18 presentations during the 21st workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Expert designers provide readers with information about a variety of topics at the frontier of analog circuit design, including Nyquist analog-to-digital converters, capacitive sensor interfaces, reliability, variability, and connectivity. This book serves as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.

Providing a detailed overview of the fundamentals and latest developments in the field of energy autonomous microsystems, this book delivers an in-depth study of the applications in the fields of health and usage monitoring in aeronautics, medical implants, and home automation, drawing out the main specifications on such systems. Introductory information on photovoltaic, thermal and mechanical energy harvesting, and conversion, is given, along with the latest results in these fields. This book also provides a state of the art of ultra-low power sensor interfaces, digital signal processing and wireless communications. In addition, energy optimizations at the sensor node and sensors network levels are discussed, thus completing this overview. This book details the challenges and latest techniques available to readers who are interested in this field. A major strength of this book is that the first three chapters are application orientated and thus, by setting the landscape, introduce the technical chapters. There is also a good balance between the technical application, covering all the system-related aspects and, within each chapter, details on the physics, materials and technologies associated with electronics. Contents Introduction. Introduction to Energy Autonomous Micro and Nano Systems and Presentation of Contributions, Marc Belleville and Cyril Condemine. 1. Sensors at the Core of Building Control, Gilles Chabanis, Laurent Chiesi, Hynek Raisigel, Isabelle Ressejac and Véronique Boutin. 2. Toward Energy Autonomous MedicalImplants, Raymond Campagnolo and Daniel Kroiss. 3. Energy Autonomous Systems in Aeronautic Applications, Thomas Becker, Jirka Klaue and Martin Kluge. 4. Energy Harvesting by Photovoltaic Effect, Emmanuelle Rouvière, Simon Perraud, Cyril Condemine and Guy Waltisperger. 5. Mechanical Energy Harvesting, Ghislain Despesse, Jean Jacques Chaillout, Sébastien Boisseau and Claire Jean-Mistral. 6. Thermal Energy Harvesting, Tristan Caroff, Emmanuelle Rouvière and Jérôme Willemin. 7. Lithium Micro-Batteries, Raphaël Salot. 8. Ultra-Low-Power Sensors, Pascal Nouet, Norbert Dumas, Laurent Latorre and Frédérick Mailly. 9. Ultra-Low-Power Signal Processing in Autonomous Systems, Christian Piguet. 10. Ultra-Low-Power Radio Frequency Communications and Protocols, Eric Mercier. 11. Energy Management in an Autonomous Microsystem, Jean-Frédéric Christmann, Edith Beigne, Cyril Condemine, Jérôme Willemin and Christian Piguet. 12. Optimizing Energy Efficiency of Sensor Networks, Olivier Sentieys and Olivier Berder.

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 24th workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Expert designers present readers with information about a variety of topics at the frontier of analog circuit design, including low-power and energy-efficient analog electronics, with specific contributions focusing on the design of efficient sensor interfaces and low-power RF systems. This book serves as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.

1.1 Overview of Lab-on-Chip Laboratory-on-Chip (LoC) is a multidisciplinary approach used for the miniaturization, integration and automation of biological assays or procedures in analytical chemistry [1–3]. Biology and chemistry are experimental sciences that are continuing to evolve and develop new protocols. Each protocol offers step-by-step laboratory instructions, lists of the necessary equipments and required biological and/or chemical substances [4–7]. A biological or chemical laboratory contains various pieces of equipment used for performing such protocols and, as shown in Fig. 1.1, the engineering aspect of LoC design is aiming to embed all these components in a single chip for single-purpose applications. 1.1.1 Main Objectives of LoC Systems Several clear advantages of this technology over conventional approaches, including portability, full automation, ease of operation, low sample consumption and fast assays time, make LoC suitable for many applications including. 1.1.1.1 Highly Throughput Screening To conduct an experiment, a researcher fills a well with the required biological or chemical analytes and keeps the sample in an incubator for some time to allowing the sample to react properly. Afterwards, any changes can be observed using a microscope. In order to quickly conduct millions of biochemical or pharmacolo- cal tests, the researchers will require an automated highly throughput screening (HTS) [8], comprised of a large array of wells, liquid handling devices (e.g., mic- channel, micropump and microvalves [9–11]), a fully controllable incubator and an integrated sensor array, along with the appropriate readout system.

Low Power UWB CMOS Radar Sensors deals with the problem of designing low cost CMOS radar sensors. The radar sensor uses UWB signals in order to obtain a reasonable target separation capability, while maintaining a maximum signal frequency below 2 GHz. This maximum frequency value is well within the reach of current CMOS technologies. The use of UWB signals means that most of the methodologies used in the design of circuits and systems that process narrow band signals, can no longer be applied. Low Power UWB CMOS Radar Sensors provides an analysis between the interaction of UWB signals, the antennas and the processing circuits. This analysis leads to some interesting conclusions on the types of antennas and types of circuits that should be used. A methodology to compare the noise performance of UWB processing circuits is also derived. This methodology is used to analyze and design the constituting circuits of the radar transceiver. In order to validate the design methodology a CMOS prototype is designed and experimentally evaluated.

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 23rd workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Expert designers present readers with information about a variety of topics at the frontier of analog circuit design, serving as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.

This book is based on the 18 tutorials presented during the 26th workshop on Advances in Analog Circuit Design. Expert designers present readers with information about a variety of topics at the frontier of analog circuit design, with specific contributions focusing on hybrid ADCs, smart sensors for the IoT, sub-1V and advanced-node analog circuit design. This book serves as a valuable reference to the state-of-the-art, for anyone involved in analog circuit research and development.