Noise modeling in a signal conditioning circuit for low power audio application using resistive sensor

Abstract

Piezoresistive sensors convert a physical value into a resistance variation. Often four resistive elements are connected together in a Wheatstone bridge to provide electrical variations of sensors. When this structure is biased with a fixed voltage source or a current source the topology provides a differential output voltage. To exploit information a conditioning circuit is associated to the bridge. In most cases it consists of an instrumentation amplifier followed by a data converter to obtain very quickly a digital representation of information. Due to the high input impedance of the instrumentation amplifier, bridge sensitivity is preserved. A filter may be added to avoid aliasing or a continuous time sigma-delta modulator that includes filtering feature. This study is concerning the conditioning structure for piezoresistive sensors bridge especially fully integrated microphones for biomedical application. The bridge signal to noise ratio is set by biasing the amplifier stage by current. The noise performance becomes the limiting factor of the read-out circuit. Current mode topologies drive amplifiers design where inputs are the main noise contributor. Modeling noise contribution is a key point in the design of the conditioning circuit. The current consumption leads noise performances too. A proposed architecture was implemented in a 65nm CMOS standard technology for performance measurement and evaluation with nanowire based microphone dedicated to hearing aids application.