How to make your integrated sensor smarter

Summary form only given. More than Moore roadmaps predict a semiconductor market evolution towards new heterogeneous integrated system-on-chip products with built-in input and output transconductors. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to find several examples of very promising sensors that could not fill the gap between sensor prototypes (devices) and final products (systems) due to the lack of suitable custom CMOS interfaces (circuits). This tutorial talk will introduce the design challenges associated with these read-out circuits, such as massive multichannel A/D conversion, sensor biasing control loops, tuning capabilities against technology deviations, and calibration strategies, as well as some other practical aspects related with the powering and packaging of full smart sensors. The low-power and compact area CMOS read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) proposals presented in this tutorial are taken from real smart sensors examples developed at IMB-CNM(CSIC) for applications such as fast clinical analysis, toxic gas classification, portable chemical sensing, infrared and X-ray imaging and remote powered sensing nodes.