Design of low-power sensor interfaces in the IoT era

Growing application areas such as the Internet of Things, biomedical and automotive introduce an increasing demand for distributed sensors and sensor nodes. Such nodes are characterized by tough requirements in terms of low energy consumption, absolute robustness and secure communication. This talk will focus on the design of low-energy and low-cost integrated sensor interface circuits. The fundamental limitations of both voltage-based and time-based solutions will be discussed and compared, and new architectures will be introduced that convert sensor signals directly into digital output for both capacitive and resistive sensors. Practical design examples will illustrate the design solutions.