ABSTRACT
This chapter describes design development and pilot production of a miniature pressure transducer for biomedical application. It focuses on testing procedures in order to fully characterize the fabricated device. The chapter also describes the interface electronic circuitry for signal processing and temperature compensation. It addresses the problem of packaging of the sensor for biomedical/body/environment. A number of small pressure transducers intended for medical applications have been developed. The major power consumer in the transducer/ interface system is the transducer itself. The summing amplifier is a standard inverting amplifier configuration. The more interesting part of this circuit is the base-line correction loop. The design utilizes the same method of temperature compensation as the implantable circuit, the only difference being that the temperature bridge balance is adjustable to accommodate transducers of different total resistance. The transducer is first pressure-cycled several times to measure its sensitivity and also any pressure hysteresis.
