ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to bring together fundamentals from the circuit and sensor design worlds to facilitate cross-domain understanding for both circuit and sensor designers. It explores underlying common techniques used widely in integrating circuits with sensing elements. The chapter provides the reader with a broad foundation to integrated sensors, with insight into the common nonidealities, operation, and design trade-offs. It begins by looking at common challenges and fundamental limitations across different sensor domains. These include sensor and circuit thermal and flicker noise, manufacturing variations and mismatch, and temperature sensitivity. The chapter then looks at common architectural techniques used across domains, including the use of dummy sensors, active offset cancellation, use of chopper stabilization, auto-zeroing, and correlated double sampling (CDS). This is followed by individual exploration of two specific sensor systems: Hall effect sensors and inertial sensors covering integrated accelerometers and gyroscopes. The chapter concludes with a recap of the architecture and circuit techniques applicable across different sensor domains.
