Sub-picoampere, 7-decade current to frequency converter for current sensing

Author

Voulgari, Evgenia ; Noy, Matthew ; Anghinolfi, Francis ; Krummenacher, Francois ; Kayal, Maher

Author_Institution

CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

fYear

2015

fDate

7-10 June 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

An Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) has been designed in order to demonstrate the limitations and the challenges in ultralow current sensing. The Utopia (Ultralow Picoammeter) ASIC is foreseen to be the front-end in the new radiation measurement system for personnel safety at CERN. It is based on the topology of a Current to Frequency Converter (CFC) and has a wide dynamic range of 7 decades without range changing. Four different channels have been implemented in order to evaluate the limits regarding sub-picoampere current measurements. Test currents starting from -50 fA have been measured.

Keywords

application specific integrated circuits; integrated circuit design; ASIC; application specific integrated circuit; current sensing; current to frequency converter; personnel safety; radiation measurement system; Application specific integrated circuits; Current measurement; Dynamic range; Electrostatic discharges; Leakage currents; Temperature measurement; Time measurement;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS), 2015 IEEE 13th International

Conference_Location

Grenoble

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NEWCAS.2015.7182071

Filename

7182071