Technology‐Driven Alternatives for Smart Sensor Interfaces

The importance of integrated microsystems is continuously growing because of the combination of two trends: the progress of silicon sensor technology and the introduction of new techniques for interface circuits. In this chapter we show how different approaches to the implementation of smart sensor systems, basically driven by the available fabrication technologies, can lead to successful designs. Three examples are presented: a fully integrated current monitor, a biaxial accelerometer, and a rotational accelerometer. The current monitor is an example of single chip implementation. It supports two different operating ranges (20 A and 200 A full scale), provides digitally programmable gain and offset with an on-chip PROM, and achieves 9 bits of resolution and ± 0.6 LSB of linearity. The biaxial accelerometer and the rotational accelerometer are examples of implementations based on two chips in the same package. They achieve 80 dB of dynamic range with ± 1 g full-scale signal over a 30 Hz bandwidth and 38 dB of dynamic range with 200 rad/s2 full-scale signal over an 800 Hz bandwidth.