A theoretical study of transducer noise in piezoresistive and capacitive silicon pressure sensors

An analysis of the effect of noise introduced by the transduction process on the minimum detectable signal (MDS) of piezoresistive and capacitive pressure sensors has been performed. MDS is first introduced as an appropriate figure of merit for comparing different sensor transduction schemes. Analyses are then performed to determine the minimum MDS theoretically achievable for a broad range of generic transducer circuits. The results of the analyses indicate that noise in the transduction process is not a limiting factor in the performance of properly designed integrated silicon sensors