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A Signal Readout System for CNT Sensor Arrays  

Shin, Young-San (School of Electronic Engineering, Soongsil University)
Wee, Jae-Kyung (School of Electronic Engineering, Soongsil University)
Song, In-Chae (School of Electronic Engineering, Soongsil University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD / v.48, no.9, 2011 , pp. 31-39 More about this Journal
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a signal readout system with small area and low power consumption for CNT sensor arrays. The proposed system consists of signal readout circuitry, a digital controller, and UART I/O. The key components of the signal readout circuitry are 64 transimpedance amplifiers (TIA) and SAR-ADC with 11-bit resolution. The TIA adopts an active input current mirror (AICM) for voltage biasing and current amplification of a sensor. The proposed architecture can reduce area and power without sampling rate degradation because the 64 TIAs share a variable gain amplifier (VGA) which needs large area and high power due to resistive feedback. In addition, the SAR-ADC is designed for low power with modified algorithm where the operation of the lower bits can be skipped according to an input voltage level. The operation of ADC is controlled by a digital controller based on UART protocol. The data of ADC can be monitored on a computer terminal. The signal readout circuitry was designed with 0.13${\mu}m$ CMOS technology. It occupies the area of 0.173 $mm^2$ and consumes 77.06${\mu}W$ at the conversion rate of 640 samples/s. According to measurement, the linearity error is under 5.3% in the input sensing current range of 10nA - 10${\mu}A$. The UART I/O and the digital controller were designed with 0.18${\mu}m$ CMOS technology and their area is 0.251 $mm^2$.
Keywords
CNT; sensor array; readout circuit; current detecting; UART; SAR-ADC;
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Times Cited By KSCI : 1  (Citation Analysis)
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