A CMOS-based tactile sensor for continuous blood pressure monitoring

A monolithic integrated tactile sensor array is presented, which is used to perform non-invasive blood pressure monitoring of a patient. The advantage of this device, compared to a hand cuff based approach, is the capability of recording continuous blood pressure data. The capacitive, membrane-based sensor device is fabricated in an industrial CMOS-technology combined with post-CMOS micromachining. The capacitance change is detected by a /spl Sigma/-/spl Delta/ modulator. The modulator is operated at a sampling rate of 128 kS/s and achieves a resolution of 12 bit with an external decimation filter and an OSR of 128.