A Fully Integrated CMOS Accelerometer Using Bondwire Inertial Sensing

This paper presents the design, implementation, and characterization of a fully integrated accelerometer using a bondwire inertial sensor. The accelerometer was implemented in a standard CMOS process without microelectromechanical processing. The system consists of a gold and aluminum bondwire inertial sensor and readout circuitry. Finite-element analysis was used to characterize the mechanical performance of the accelerometer and reinforce empirical data. The system includes a fully differential frequency modulation downconversion architecture and consumes 13.5 mW while achieving a gain of 10 kHz/g, a bandwidth of 700 Hz, and a resolution of 80 mg. The chip was fabricated in an 0.13-m CMOS process with an area of 1.1 mm.