I2MTC 2008 - IEEE International Instrumentation and

Measurement Technology Conference

Victoria, Vancouver Island, Canada, May 12-15, 2008

An Integrated Interface for Leaky Capacitive Sensor

with Emphasize on Humidity Sensor

A. Heidary and G.C.M. Meijer

Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory, Delft University of Technology
Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft, the Netherlands.
Phone +31 15 278 5026; Fax: +31 15 278 5755; E-mail: a.heidarygtudelft.nl

Abstract - This paper presents the analysis and design of an
integrated interface for leaky capacitive sensors with emphasize on
humidity sensor. For such an application, we developed a novel type
of integrated interface circuit. With this circuit it is possible to
measure the capacitance of a humidity sensor, at the presence of
shunting resistors, with sufficient accuracy. For the signal
processing, a relaxation oscillator is used with a modifiedfront-end
which is a novel capacitance to voltage converter, to optimize the
interface circuit for immunity to leakage. The circuit has been
designed and implemented in 0. 7fum standard CMOS technology.
Experimental results show that a 220 kQ shunt resistance (4.5 hS)
causes an error that corresponds to about 1.25% in relative
humidity which is also agree with our simulation result. The
measured resolution is 14 bitfor measurement time of 30 ms and the
measured non-linearity is about 2x10i4. The interface chip
consumes about imA and takes a chip area of 2.8 mm2.
Keywords - Capacitive sensor, Humidity sensors, Interface
I. INTRODUCTION
The capacitance of capacitive sensors is often measured
with low-frequency signals. In the ideal case, this has the
advantage that the front-end of the interface can be
implemented with simple circuits, which consume only little
power. However, in that case leakage of the sensing element
could be a problem. This is the case, for instance, with
humidity sensor or other sensors which work in a
contaminated or humid environment, and where resistive
leakage can have a big impact on the impedance to be
measured. For such applications, the effect of leakage should
be considered in the interface design.
An algorithmic way to improve the immunity of the
measurements for leakage is reported in [1]. However,
application of this method will considerably increase the
measurement time. Moreover, when the leakage exceeds a
certain conductance value (in the range of hS), the interface
doesn't work anymore. Yet, for a leakage conductance of less
than 0.4 htS, the relative error is reduced to a value less than
1.5X10-3 [1].
A better way to obtain leakage immunity is to keep the DC
voltage over the sensor at zero level. An interface, based on
this concept, with discrete elements, is introduced in [2]. In
[2] it is reported, that for leakage conductance of less than 1
[tS, the relative error is less than 4.4X 10-3. However, when
the shunt conductance exceeds a value of about 1 [tS, this
error increases dramatically. In fact, the circuit presented in
[2] has been optimized for small capacitors with a value of a
few pF, using discrete components. In contrast, the interface
circuit introduced in this paper has been designed for
common humidity sensors, which have capacitances of a few
hundred pF, and using integrated-circuit technology,
including an additional front-end amplifier.
When capacitive humidity sensors are exposed to a high
humidity over a long period of time, the leakage can cause
shunting conductance that largely exceed the value of 1 [iS.
Therefore, we designed the novel integrated interface with
the following design targets:
1- The applied oscillator should not stop oscillating for a
shunt resistance as small as 10 kQ.
2- For a leakage conductance up to 5 [tS, the error in relative
humidity should be less than 1%.
For experimental evaluation, the interface has been
designed and implemented in a 0.7ptm standard CMOS
process. Design opportunities and constraints are discussed
together with simulation and measurement results.
II. CIRCUIT PRINCIPLES
The applied front-end circuit, for the interface for leaky
capacitive sensor, is based on the use of a relaxation
oscillator [3] and a new capacitance-to-voltage converter. The
output signals are period modulated and can directly be read
out by a microcontroller. Although we optimized the
interface for humidity sensors, the main concept will work for
all capacitive sensors suffering from leakage. In the novel
interface, during the so-called sampling phase, the capacitor
C1 is charged. Next, during the so-called transfer phase, this
charge is transferred to a high-quality integrated capacitor, as
fast as possible. Similar to the idea presented in [2] during the
charge transfer phase, the DC voltage across the sensor is
kept as low as possible. However, in case of high values of
the capacitances and shunting conductance the circuit
presented in [2] will lose its accuracy of even its
functionality, because it can stop oscillating. This problem
can be solved by applying a special front-end amplifier that
functions as a capacitor-to-voltage converter (CVC). Already
in the interface circuit presented in [3] such a front-end

1-4244-1541-1/08/$25.00 C 2008 IEEE

amplifier has been applied. However, in that circuit the
excitation voltage for the sensor will contain a DC
component with the value of ± Vdd/2, which in our application
is not allowed. For our new interface circuit a CVC has been
designed in such a way, that during the charge-transfer phase
no DC voltage components is found in the excitation voltage
of the sensor.
Figure 1 shows the novel CVC with some related signals.
The capacitors Coff and Cref are external capacitors, the
resistor RX represents the leakage resistance of a leaky
capacitive sensor Cx. The other components are implemented
inside the chip. The pins of the chip are named A, B, C and
D.
(PI
(a)
:Ph1: Ph2
Vdrive Vdd
Vd, Vdd2
V III. IMPLEMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT
At
(b)
Fig. 1. (a) A Capacitor-to-voltage converter (CVC) for leaky capacitive
sensor; (b) some important signals.
In phase 1, when P1 is high, the selected capacitor will be
charged to Vdd. In phase 2 the charge of C', Vdd/2 will be
pumped to Cf and cause the output voltage VO to jump with a
value Ci, Vddl2Cf, where Ci,1 is one of the three input
capacitances. It is clear that in the ideal case (ideal switches,
op-amp and driving-voltage source), RX cannot affect the
output voltage. In case of a finite ON resistance of the
switches, this favorable situation is not valid anymore. Even,
when ignoring Rx, the allowable switch-ON resistance will be
limited by the required charge-transfer speed. To achieve a
certain level of accuracy, the charge-transfer time constant,
should be small enough. However, the presence of RX will
also introduce a steady-state error. As mentioned in the
previous section, in phase 1, the selected capacitor is
supposed to be charged to Vdrive. If the switches are ideal the
capacitor will be charged to a level determined by the driving
signal, independent of Rx and the selected capacitor.
However, due to an ON resistance R0.1, of switch SX, CX
cannot be fully charged, which causes inaccuracy. The
relative error due to this effect amounts to:
RonRX (1)
RO =
Obviously, it will not be difficult to keep Ron small enough
as compared to the leakage resistor, so that this error is
negligible. In a similar way, also the output resistance ro of
the driving source will affect the accuracy. Beside these static
errors, RX and ro can also cause dynamic error. Because, due
to finite charge-transfer speed, a transient voltage will appear
across the sensor. The charge loss due to these transients can
be distinguished into two parts. The first part is due to the
transient voltages at the negative input of amplifier, and the
second part is due to the transients in the driving voltage. The
first part is almost independent of the selected capacitor, and
can be canceled out by applying three-signal auto-calibration
[3]. However, the second part only exists when Cx is selected.
So, auto-calibration will not eliminate the resulting error.
Analyzing this error is not simple. Yet, it is easy to
understand that, to minimize this error, we should maximize
the bandwidth of the amplifier and minimize both the switch
resistance Ro01, of switch Sx and the internal impedance of the
driving-voltage source.
Generally, the offset effect is removed by chopping.
However, in our case the offset voltage can cause some
charge loss and thus increase the effect of leakage. However,
it can be proven that also this effect can significantly be
reduced.
RESULT
Figure 2(a), shows the block diagram of the complete
interface, including three-signal auto-calibration. The
interface output signal is shown in Fig. 2(b). According to the
three-signal auto-calibration technique, a single measurement
cycle consists of three phases: one to measure the offset
capacitor Coff, one for the reference capacitor Cref, and a third
one for the sensor capacitor Cx. The different time intervals
Tref, Toff and Tx, correspond to the output signals during the
measuring of Coff, Cref and Cx, respectively. The interface has
been designed and implemented in 0.7 ptm standard CMOS
technology.
The different periods of the output signal, can be read with
a micro-controller. For identification purposes, the time
interval Toff is splitted into two short periods [3]. Data can be
read via a serial port (RS232) and can be analyzed, for
instance, with a Labview program.
The interface consumes 0.7 mA up to 1.4 mA, for a power
supply voltage that can change from 3.5 V to 5.5 V. The
change of the output voltage from 3.5 V to 5.5 V will yield a
relative error that is less than 10-4.
 The main objective of this work is to measure a sensor
capacitance independent of its leakage. Figure 4 shows the
simulated and measured result of the relative error (C, -
CO)IC,o versus the leakage conductance, for CX=220 pF. In
principal CxO should be the measured capacitor for Rx= -.
However, for practical reasons we made another choice: In
our tests the leakage has been hardware simulated with an
external resistor. It appears that these resistors have a
parasitic capacitor in the order of 0.15 pF. This value is
(a) almost independent of the resistor value. Therefore, during
the measurement of Cxo, instead of RX -X -, a physical
Tref resistance Rx= 10 MQ has been used. As can be concluded
from the measurement results below this value is already high
enough and will not cause a significant error. Moreover, it is
rather easy to compensate for such effects. For a shunting
conductance of 4.5 [tS (220 kQ), the absolute error was found
(b) to be 0.49 pF. Supposing that the sensitivity of the sensor is
0.4 pF / 0 RH, this error corresponds to an error of 1.25 00 in
Fig.2. (a) The complete interface including three-signal auto-calibration; (b) relative humidity, which is quite close to our target.
the interface output signal.

As an example, Fig. 3 shows the measurement result for Shunting conductance G, (ptS)
CX=220 pF while Coff =100 pF and Cref =330 pF (being O.OE+00
X is

default value). The measurement time is about 30 ms. The -1 .OE-03

standard deviation of the measured capacitor Cx is a 11 fF, -2.OE-03 _ 0

which corresponds to more than 14 bit resolution. Since we -3 .OE-03

optimized the interface for a capacitive sensor up to 500 pF, -4.OE-03
and yet we want to use a not-too-large value of the integrated
-5.OE-03
capacitor Cf (Fig. 2), our driving voltage is limited to 0.25 V,
* Simulation Measurement
only. A higher resolution can be achieved by increasing the o

driving voltage. However, for humidity sensor the present
resolution is more than enough.
Typically, for the complete humidity range, the
capacitance of humidity sensor changes, for instance, 40 pF
around 200 pF. Therefore, we do not need to measure the
linearity for whole dynamic range, (0 pF to 500 pF). Instead,
we measured the nonlinearity of the interface with the
method presented in [4], for 40 pF range around different
point from 100 pF to 400 pF, which covers the most common
capacitance ranges for humidity sensors. The measured non-
linearity is less than 2x 10-4, which corresponds to an error of
about 0.01% in terms of relative humidity. Such an error is
much smaller than that caused by the non-linearity of the
Fig.4. The relative error versus the shunting conductance.
For a fixed shunting conductance, increasing the capacitor
Cx will increase the dynamic error in almost the same rate.
However, the static error will remain constant. Therefore the
relative error will decrease, while the absolute error increases.
Figure 6 shows the absolute error in measured Cx versus Cx,
for a shunting resistance of 560 kQ. As expected, the absolute
error increases with increasing sensor capacitor Cx.
Sensor capacitance C, (pF)
-0.10 -

00 150 200 250 300

sensor itself. -0.12 -

222.88 -0.14 -
v. 222.87 11fF Cavr =222.8 3 7 pF
-0.16 -
222.86
o 222.85 -0.18 -
. 222.84 -0.20 -
222.83
$:)
o 22282 -0.22 -
a 222.81
ct 222.8 Fig.5. The absolute error in measured C, versus C,, for a shunting resistance
0 20 40 60 80 100 of 560 kQ.
Number of measurement N
In order to separate the electronic circuitry from the humid
Fig.3. Measurement result for a capacitor with nominal value of 220 pF and a environment, the sensors are connected to the interface via a
measurement time of 30 ms. coaxial cable. Therefore, it is important that the interface can
measure sensor capacitance with enough immunity for the
 0.0

-0 1
e

)a200 400
--
effects of large parasitic capacitances Figure 7 shows the
absolute error, (C, - Co0), in measuring a capacitance with the
nominal value of 220 pF versus parasitic capacitances, Cp,
(CX0 is measured capacitor with Cp = 0 pF). Note that, with
the parasitic capacitance up to 470 pF, the error is negligible.
Moreover, even at 1 nF, corresponding to about 10 meter of
cable, the error in relative humidity is less than 1% if we
suppose that the sensitivity of the sensor is 0.4 pF / 0 RH.
0.4
0.3

0.2 -
0.1
-

600

Parasitic capacitances (pF)

800 1C

Fig.5. The absolute error, in measuring a capacitance with the nominal value
of 220 pF versus parasitic capacitances, Cp.
[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]
IV. CONCLUSIONS
An integrated interface for leaky capacitive sensor has
been presented. The major non-ideality of the front-end have
been identified and discussed. The complete interface has
been designed and implemented in 0.7 ptm standard CMOS
technology. Measurement results, which are in close
agreement with simulation results, show that a shunt
conductance as big as 4.5 [tS for a capacitance of 220 pF will
cause a relative error less than 0.2%. The measured resolution
is 14 bit for measurement time of 30 ms and the measured
non-linearity is about 2x 10-4.
REFERENCES
X. Li and G. C. M. Meijer, "Elimination of shunting conductance effect
in a low-cost capacitive-sensor interface, IEEE Trans. Instrum.
Meas.,Vol. 49, No. 3, pp. 531-534, June. 2000.IEEE Reference
X. Li and G.C. M. Meijer, "An accurate interface for capacitive sensor,
IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas.,Vol. 51, No. 5, pp. 935-939, October.
2002.
F. van der Goes, "Low-Cost Smart Sensor Interfacing" PhD thesis
Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, 1996.
A. Heidary and G.C. M. Meijer, "An Integrated Switched-Capacitor
Front-End for Capacitive Sensors with a Wide Dynamic Range,
ESSCIC, Munich, Germany, page 404-407, September 2007.