Author Info

Nikos Petrellis1,2, Christos Spathis2, Konstantina Georgakopoulou2, Alexios Birbas2

1 Computer Science and Telecommunications Dept.

Technological Educational Institute of Larisa
Larisa, Greece

2 Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept.

University of Patras,
Patras, Greece

Complete address, phone number fax number & email address of corresponding author
Nikos Petrellis
Assistant professor
Computer Science and Telecommunications Dept.
TEI of Larisa
TEI campus,
Larisa 41110, Greece
Tel: +302410684542
Fax: +302410684573
Email: npetrellis@teilar.gr

Short running title for the manuscript.

Capacitive Sensor Estimation

Keywords

Biosensor readout, configurable reference capacitors, analogue-to-digital conversion, charge sensitive

amplifier, switched capacitance interface
CAPACITIVE SENSOR ESTIMATION BASED ON SELF-CONFIGURABLE
REFERENCE CAPACITANCE
Abstract
A number of capacitance readout systems presented in the literature and covered by recent patents are briefly described while
a biosensor array readout system developed by the authors is presented in this paper. This biosensor array readout system is
based on a charge sensitive amplifier that estimates accurately the difference between a self-configurable reference
capacitance and a biosensor. In the specific implementation, the self-configurable reference capacitance is automatically
configured to a value between 0 and 630pF in steps of 10pF. The configuration of the reference capacitance is controlled by a
simple finite state machine that can be implemented using a simple CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device) such as
Altera EPM7064SLC44-10. The proposed system can be used to measure an absolute biosensor capacitance of up to 640pF
with a theoretical sensitivity of 2.5fF. The 2.5fF resolution can be achieved using a low cost/high accuracy 12-bit ADC
(Analogue/Digital Converter) like a one that has been described by the authors in a recent patent instead of a 17-bit ADC that
would be required to measure the biosensor capacitance value with the same accuracy if a constant 320pF reference capacitor
had been used. For this reason, the proposed architecture leads to a lower area/power and higher accuracy implementation
compared to a read out circuit that would use a fixed reference capacitance. Although the design of the proposed system was
inspired by the development of a biosensor array readout system, a similar architecture can be used by any sensor application
that should support a broad capacitive input range with high resolution.

1. Introduction
Biosensors often allow chemical reactions that influence their capacitance [1]. Such biosensors are used for example in
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis as described in [2]. Although the capacitance variation is usually slow and does not
require fast digitisation, a high ADC resolution is necessary to observe small capacitance changes starting from an arbitrary
high initial value within a range of e.g., 1000pF. The DNA used in these sensors can be retrieved from tissues, blood, saliva
etc. Genotype or expression analysis can be based on genomic or complementary DNA respectively. The single stranded
DNA binds to a complementary stranded DNA on a biosensor array. Reactions of this type are often called “hybridisation”
and a biosensor capacitance change occurs as a result.
A hybridisation requires often several minutes or even hours to complete. Although, the monitoring of each individual
biosensor is slow, a large number of biosensors (e.g., 64 or 256) may have to be read at regular time intervals. It is essential
in this case to achieve a sensitivity of a few fF although the initial capacitance of a biosensor may start from an arbitrary high
value (up to 1nF). The target in such applications is to accurately monitor how the biosensor capacitance changes rather than
recording its absolute capacitance values.
Capacitive sensors are also used in several other applications like humidity [3] and pressure [4] measurement,
gyroscopes [5] etc. The most popular method for capacitance measurement is the use of Charge Sensitive Amplifiers (CSA)
[2] or Switched Capacitance Interface (SCI) [6] or Capacitance to Voltage Amplifier [7]. In the Charge Sensitive Amplifiers
a voltage pulse is applied to the capacitor under test and the charge stored there is distributed to a reference capacitor when
the input pulse ends. An operational amplifier is used to integrate the voltage accross the reference capacitor and the output of
this amplifier may be either a sawtooth curve or a voltage level. In the first case a low threshold comparator may convert the
sawtooth curve to a digital pulse whose duration is proportional to the measured capacitance. A counter enabled by the output
of the comparator may provide a digital representation of the measured capacitance [2]. If the CSA output is a voltage level,
then an ADC like Sigma-Delta, Successive Approximation, Pipelined etc, with appropriate resolution may convert this
voltage indication to a digital representation of the capacitance. Switched Capacitance Interface circuits are actually CSAs
that use several switches to charge/discharge the reference and the measured capacitor rather than accepting a voltage pulse at
their input. In [8] a feedback path connects the output of a CSA or SCI stage to the parasitic capacitances minimizing their
effect in linearity and accuracy.
Differential Capacitance (i.e., the difference between two unknown capacitors) can be measured by circuits like the one
presented in [9] or [10]. In non-differential capacitance applications the difference between a reference and the unknown
capacitor is estimated [6]. The closer the reference capacitor to the unknown one is, the higher the accuracy that can be
achieved. For this reason, a configurable reference capacitor has been proposed in [11] where 6 input sensors are multiplexed
and a combination of 3 capacitors forms a reference value. The first author of [11] has also presented a hummidity and
temperature sensor control method based on switching elements that produce pulse series that can be integrated in order to
estimate the sensor values [12]. The output of the employed CSA is digitally processed. Configurable on-chip reference
capacitor has also been used in [6]. The reference capacitance can be configured in the range of 250fF to 15pF in steps of
250fF.
In a recent patent [13] an appropriate readout system for strain and accelerometer capacitive sensors used in Micro-
Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) is presented. In this approach a specific number of actuator voltage pulses with the
same polarity are applied to the sensors and integrated by an SCI circuit that requires a number of switching clock signals
(for the Integrate, Reset, Sample stage) leading to a final voltage level that is measured by an ADC. Using multiple actuator
voltage pulses instead of a single one and integrating the measured capacitor output, compensates potential noise problems (it
can be viewed as a kind of averaging) and adjusts the final output voltage to a desired range eliminating the need of a gain
control mechanism. Moreover, the approach presented in [13] does not need actuator voltage pulses with alternating
polarities to be applied in order to avoid an asymmetric positioning of the sensor. These are the advantages of the approach
presented in [13] compared to a similar read out system presented in [14]. Nevertheless, the accumulation of multiple
measurements through the integration performed by a SCI circuit like the one presented in [12] increases the latency of a
single sensor read. Using the suggested clock frequency of 10.8kHz the strain sensors can be read with a 20Hz rate and a
±1% error. A very accurate capacitance measurement is performed in [15] based on a delta-sigma converter and a high
precision calibration stage.
The specific system described in this paper can cover a very broad capacitance range of 640pF with an accuracy of up to
2.44fF. It will be made clear however, that different ranges and resolutions can also be supported based on the proposed
architecture. None of the approaches referenced above can cover such a wide range with this accuracy. Moreover, the system
can be implemented using low die area mainly due to the small size of the used ADC. The system described in this paper has
been partially implemented and evaluated for the read-out of sensors like the ones described in [1]. More specifically, an
address decoder that selects one of 64 biosensors has been implemented along with a CSA like the one presented in [6] or
[11] to the input of which the selected biosensor is connected. These modules have been implemented using TSCM90nm
CMOS technology. A digitally implemented Finite State Machine (FSM) was described in VHSIC Hardware Description
Language (VHDL) and evaluated seperately using an extremely low cost Altera EPM7064SLC44-10 CPLD that can connect
to the CSA, an appropriate combination of external reference capacitors that can provide a reference value between 0 and
630pF in steps of 10pF. Of course the choice of the specifc hardware description language and CPLD component is not
restrictive. They were employed just to demonstrate the low complexity of an FSM like the one required by the proposed
system. The CSA output can be measured using an appropriate ADC according to the application sensitivity specifications.
The authors have proposed a low area/power ADC with a configurable resolution of 4 to 12 bits that could have been
employed [16][17].
The CSA used and its simulated output is presented in Section 2. The biosensor array readout system and the
implementation of the FSM used for the self-configuration of the reference capacitance are presented in Section 3. Finally,
the readout speed and the resolution that can be achieved are discussed in Section 4 along with a comparison with the
referenced approaches that provide information about the input capacitance range and the accuracy that they achieve.

2. CHARGE SENSITIVE AMPLIFIER

Rdis
reset
Cf

- CSA Output
Cx Cref
+ Vout

Φ VA
GND or
Φ Φ~ V
ref reset
Fig. 1. Charge Sensitive Amplifier.

The simplest implementation of the CSA front end appears in Fig. 1.The unknown capacitance Cx is compared to the parallel
reference capacitor Cref and the output of the integrator is given by equation (1) when the integration is complete [6].

C x  C ref
Vout  V A (1)
Cf

The voltage VA is the Φ signal amplitude. The reset signal has the same period with Φ or Φ~ but lower duty cycle and is
used to discharge Cf when Φ is high. Appropriate shifting of the output voltage can be performed if the non-inverting input of
the operational amplifier of Fig. 1 is connected to a reference voltage V ref instead of ground. In this case, the output Vout is
incremented by Vref.
Using a voltage indication that is linearly proportional to the capacitance under test is very important. In [2], no reference
capacitor Cref is used and the feedback one is discharged through a resistance Rdis that is used in place of the reset switch of
Fig. 1. In this case, the varying current that discharges a feedback capacitor like C f of Fig. 1 leads to an integrator output of
the form:

Q t / 
Vout   e (2)
Cf

where Q is the charge integrated by Cf during each pulse period and τ=CfRdis. The authors in [2] use a special technique with
schottky diodes to keep the discharge current stable and make the CSA output linear for broader capacitive input ranges.
In the present work, the approach of Fig. 1 is used due to its robustness and simplicity since no special components like
schottky diodes are needed. The integrator is implemented by the operational amplifier presented in [11] that does not require
additional bias voltages. In Fig. 2, the shape of the Fig. 1 CSA circuit signals is shown. A parametric post-layout simulation
has been performed for the CSA output by the Spectre simulator in Cadence environment for Cx values between 150pF and
160pF in Fig. 3. The linearity behavior of the CSA circuit in this range has been experimentally verified using external
commercial capacitors of 150, 156 and 160pF. A 150pF value has been chosen for the capacitors Cref and Cf of the CSA
circuit shown in Fig. 1. A similar parametric post-layout simulation for Cx values between 500pF and 510pF is shown in Fig.
4. The linearity behavior of the CSA circuit in this case has also been experimentally verified using combinations of
commercial capacitors and a 500pF value has been chosen for the capacitors Cref and Cf. The signals Φ and Φ~ have a period
of 200usec but it is obvious from Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 that a significantly shorter period could have been used since the critical
transient interval at the beginning of Φ pulse is quite shorter. More specifically a 10usec period is adequate for these signals.
The duty cycle of Φ (or Φ~) and the reset signal is 50% and 25% respectively. The output of the CSA for a capacitance
difference between 0 and +10pF is quite linear as can be seen by Fig. 3 and 4. Linearity issues will be discussed in more
detail in Section 4. The appropriate time to sample the CSA output is when Φ is high. At this time interval an ADC with
appropriate resolution can convert the analog CSA output to a digital representation of the measured capacitance.
 CSA Signals

CSA Output Reset Φ Φ~

Fig. 2. The shape of the CSA Signals

390

380
150pF
370
151pF
360 152pF
CSA Output (mV)

153pF
350
154pF
340
155pF
330 156pF
157pF
320
158pF
310 159pF

300 160pF
0 50 100 150 200
Time (us)

Fig. 3. CSA Output with Cx between 150pF and 160pF (Cf=Cref=150pF).

 335

330 500pF
501pF
325
502pF
CSA Output (mV)

320 503pF
504pF
315 505pF
506pF
310
507pF
305 508pF
509pF
300
510pF
0 50 100 150 200
Time (us)

Fig. 4. CSA Output with Cx between 500pF and 510pF (Cf=Cref=500pF).

 Biosensor Array

BSY_NRDY DDn-1 … DD0

Biosensor Array
Readout Circuit
…
LATCH Α0
mx2m Α1
… Decoder ..
Αm-1

n-bit ADC

Φ
CSA STB
FSM
CMP Internal Clock
NEG Generator CLK

POS CMP

Φ~

ENC (P)RESETC ENB (P)RESETB ENA (P)RESETA

IN CLK IN CLK IN CLK

0 SHIFTER C 0 SHIFTER B 0 SHIFTER A

SC3 SC2 … SC0 SB3 SB2 … SB0 SA3 SA2 … SA0

CCCs
… …
CCCs

CBCs …
..
CBCs

CACs
…
..
CACs

ENCODER

DB0 DB1 … DBk-1

Fig. 5. The architecture of the Biosensor Readout System with Self-Configurable Capacitance Reference.
3. READOUT SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
The architecture of the biosensor array readout system proposed in this paper is presented in Fig. 5. The
biosensor array consists of a number of biosensors (64 in the specific case) that share a common pin.
This common pin is connected to the CSA inverting input. The specific biosensor that has to be read is
selected using an m to 2m decoder (m=6 in the specific implementation). The signal STB initiates a
specific read cycle from the biosensor that is addressed using the signals A 0..Am-1. The signals Φ and
Φ~ can be generated from the external input signal STB. The Φ signal is applied to the selected
biosensor through the m to 2m address decoder.
The common pin of the biosensors is connected to the inverting input of the CSA integrator as well
as the reference capacitor as was shown in Fig. 1. The reference capacitor is formed by a combination
of at least 9 external capacitors (some redundant capacitors are also used to handle capacitor tolerance
as will be explained in the following paragraphs). These capacitors can also be incorporated in the
same chip as the readout system but their capacitance would have to be much smaller leading to a
limited capacitance input range of the whole system. All of these external capacitors share a common
pin that is connected to the common pin of the biosensors and the inverting input of the CSA integrator.
The other pin of the reference capacitors is connected through a switch to the Φ~ signal that is also
generated by the input signal STB through an inverter. The reference capacitors and their switches are
classified in 3 groups and the parallel connection of the capacitors within a group is controlled by a
corresponding shift register (SHIFTER A, B and C). The operation of these shift registers is controlled
in turn by a simple Finite State Machine (FSM).
Before we describe in detail the FSM, the algorithm for the reference capacitor value formation
should be explained. Assuming that an input range of 640pF is adequate, the reference capacitor value
can be expressed in a radix-4 numerical system representation with 3 digits as:

C ref  (b2 4 2  b1 41  b0 4 0 )  10 pF (3)

where the digits b2, b1 and b0 can be 0, 1, 2 or 3 and denote how many capacitors of 160pF, 40pF and
10pF respectively have to be connected in parallel. Notice that each external capacitor value is an
exponential value of 4 multiplied by 10pF in order to create all the capacitance reference combinations
between 0 and 630pF with steps of 10pF. In order to implement any of these reference capacitor
combinations, three sets (A, B and C) of 3 capacitors each, is required. The first set (A) has 3 identical
10pF capacitors. The second set (B) has 3 identical 40pF and the third set (C) has 3 identical 160pF
capacitors. Higher number of potential combinations can be achieved if more than 3 sets are defined or
if the 3 digits in equation (3) had a potentially different radix:

Cref  (b2CC  b1CB  b0C A )  Cs (4)

It should be noticed, that in the present design, radix-4 was used in order to cover the specific
capacitance range with the simplest reference capacitance bank and interconnection scheme. A
different numerical system may have been selected if a different range had to be covered. The use of
external commercial capacitors has some significant drawbacks. First of all, there are several
capacitance values that are not commercially available in a single component and have to be formed by
a combination of capacitors connected in parallel or even in series. Then, each commercial component
has a tolerance from its typical value. Although expensive components may have a small tolerance
(e.g., 1%), this tolerance has to be taken into consideration. Parasitic capacitances affect the typical
capacitor values too. More accurate capacitor ratios could have been achieved if the reference
capacitors were implemented on-chip but their absolute values in this case would have to be quite
smaller significantly limiting the capacitance input range of the whole system.
The tolerance of the external reference capacitors is handled in this work by using one redundant
capacitor in each one of the A, B and C sets mentioned above. Although the reference capacitance is
still formed in a radix-4 numerical system as described by equation (3), the digits b 2, b1 and b0 can now
have 5 values: 0-4 allowing the connection of up to 4 identical capacitors in parallel. Using this
extended radix-4 notation a specific capacitance value may have more than one representation. For
example, the capacitance of 160pF can be implemented by using a single 160pF capacitor (b 2=1, b1=0
and b0=0) or by connecting in parallel four 40pF capacitors (b 2=0, b1=4 and b0=0), or by connecting in
parallel three 40pF and four 10pF capacitors (b2=0, b1=3 and b0=4). This redundancy reassures that
there will be no gaps due to component tolerances in the supported input capacitance range.
The CSA output is monitored by a pair of comparators (CMP) that decide whether the measured
capacitance is higher or lower than the current reference one (indications POS and NEG respectively of
Fig. 5). These indications are used by the FSM that controls the 3 shift registers (A, B and C). The
operation of each one of these shift registers is depicted in Fig. 6.

EN PRESET RESET

0 IN CLK
SHIFTER
S3 S2 S1 S0

1 1 1 1 after PRESET=1
0 1 1 1 after 1st clk period (capacitor controlled by S3 disconnected)
0 0 1 1 2nd clk period (capacitor controlled by S3, S2 disconnected)
0 0 0 1 3rd clk period (capacitor controlled by S3, S2, S1 disconnected)
0 0 0 0 4th clk period (all capacitors disconnected)

Fig. 6. A Shift register operation.

Each shift register is a Serial In, Parallel Out (SIPO) register with a Reset, Preset, Enable and
Clock input. The bit that is shifted in, is inserted by the IN pin and the outputs of the shifter are
available at the S3-S0 pins. During the reference capacitor self-configuration phase, all the outputs of a
shift register have to be initially reset (disconnecting all the attached capacitors), then at a specific time
all of them have to be preset to 1 (connecting all the attached capacitors in parallel) and finally some
capacitors have to be gradually disconnected by shifting in, one or more 0’s as shown in Fig. 6. The
algorithm that can exploit such a shifting operation in order to perform the appropriate self-
configuration is the following:
1) Connect all CC capacitors (Cref=4CCCS)
2) Repeat disconnecting CC capacitors until Cref=cCCCS<Cx c=4, 3, 2, 1, 0
3) Connect all CB capacitors (Cref=cCCCS+4CBCS)
4) Repeat disconnecting CB capacitors until Cref=cCCCS+bCBCS<Cx b=4, 3, 2,
1, 0
5) Connect all CA capacitors (Cref=cCCCS+bCBCS+4CBCS)
6) Repeat disconnecting CA capacitors until Cref=cCCCS+bCBCS+aCACS<Cx a=4,
3, 2, 1, 0

NEG NEG
POS /
{ DISABLE C
PRESET B
S1 ENABLE B } S2

STB / POS /
{ RESET { DISABLE B
PRESET C PRESET A
ENABLE C ENABLE A }
BUSY }
POS /
{ DISABLE A
S0 READY } S3

NEG
Fig. 7. A simplified form of the FSM used to self-configure the reference capacitance
 Initially, the maximum reference capacitance that can be formed by connecting in parallel all the
CCCS capacitors (4x160pF=640pF in the specific implementation) is set and compared to the unknown
capacitance of the selected biosensor. If its value is smaller than the reference one, the 2 nd step of the
algorithm described above disconnects the appropriate number of 160pF capacitors until the biosensor
capacitance is higher than the current reference capacitance. In the 3rd step of this algorithm, all the
CBCS capacitors (4x40pF=160pF in the specific implementation) are connected in parallel with the
CCCS ones left in parallel by step 2. Then in step 4, some 40pF capacitors are disconnected one by one
until the reference capacitance gets smaller than that of the selected biosensor. A similar operation is
repeated for the 10pF capacitors (CACS). The steps 1, 3 and 5 of the algorithm described earlier are
implemented by activating the Preset input of the corresponding shift register. The steps 2, 4 and 6 are
implemented by shifting an appropriate number of 0’s in the corresponding register as shown in Fig. 6.
This zero shifting is stopped when the enable signal EN of the corresponding shifter is disabled by the
FSM.
A simplified structure of the FSM appears at Fig. 7. The initial state is S0. When the signal STB is
activated, the 3 shift registers A, B and C are all reset for a certain period and then shift register C is
preset to connect all the CCCS capacitors in parallel. The Enable signal of shift register C is activated
then, to allow the gradual disconnection of CCCS capacitors as indicated by the 2nd step of the algorithm
described earlier.

Fig. 8. Simulation of the FSM.

The FSM visits state S1 at this point and stays there for as long as the measured capacitance C x is
smaller than the reference one Cref (indication NEG). When this condition becomes false (indication
POS), an FSM transition to state S2 occurs, followed by the disable of the shift register C, the preset of
the shift register B to connect in parallel all the CBCS capacitors and eventually the enable of B to allow
the gradual disconnection of the CBCS capacitors. The CBCS reference capacitance disconnection stops
when the measured capacitance Cx gets smaller than the reference one Cref (indication POS, transition
to S3 state). The whole procedure is repeated in the same manner by connecting in parallel all the C ACS
capacitors and gradually disconnecting them until the reference value C ref that is closer to the unknown
capacitance Cx is determined.
The implementation of the FSM in a hardware description language as VHDL is easier if the 4
state FSM described above is extended to an 8-state FSM as shown in Fig. 8 where the FSM is
simulated in Altera Max Plus II. The VHDL code of the FSM can run on an Altera EPM7064SLC44-
10 CPLD. The signals STB, POS and the clock CLK are the input of the FSM. The signals RESET,
PRESET and EN(ABLE) are the corresponding ones for each shift register and operate as described
above. The internal signal “state” indicates the current FSM state while “cnt” is an internal counter
used to determine the duration of the RESET and PRESET pulses. The BSY_NRDY signal prohibits
the acquisition system from retrieving invalid transient or inaccurate biosensor measurements as long
as the reference capacitor is in a self-configuration mode.
The shifter outputs are encoded in a k-bit output DB that represents a value between 0 and 63 in
the specific implementation. For this reason, k=log264=6 bits. The specific encoding can be obviously
determined by simplifying the boolean expressions that relate the k outputs (DB0..DBk-1) with the 12
encoder inputs (the shifter outputs SC, SB and SA) but the detailed description of the encoding scheme
is out of the scope of this paper.
The n-bit ADC generates the indication DD that can be combined with DB by the acquisition
system that controls the readout circuit of Fig. 5 in order to estimate the biosensor capacitance using
the following equation:

Cs
C x  DB  C s  DD (5)
2n

Decoder PISO/SIPO
6x64 registers

CSA

Fig. 9. The layout of the IC with the Decoder 6x64 and the CSA used.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 10. The detailed layout of the Decoder 6x64 (a) and the CSA (b).
 As already mentioned, the FSM operation was evaluated using an Altera EPM7064SLC44-10
CPLD on a low cost Leap Electronics FPT-3 evaluation board. The 6x64 biosensor address decoder
and the CSA were evaluated using the integrated circuit (IC) implemented in TSCM90nm CMOS
technology that is shown in Fig. 9. This IC was developed by the authors for a biosensor read-out
circuit based on a slightly different configuration. More specifically, the CSA in this IC generates a
sawtooth pulse converted by a comparator to a rectangular pulse with a duration that is proportional to
the measured capacitance. This pulse duration is measured by a counter. The counter indication and the
biosensor address are transferred in a serial manner using Parallel In Serial Out (PISO) and Serial In
Parallel Out (SIPO) registers.
The layout of the address decoder and the CSA are shown in Fig. 10a and 10b respectively. The
evaluation board with the specific IC developed by the authors is shown in Fig. 11. The CSA inputs
and output of the implemented IC are connected as was shown in Fig. 1 in order to evaluate the
operation demonstrated by Fig. 2-4 with appropriate reference capacitors. The STB signal is used to
generate the appropriate Φ signal that is applied to the selected biosensor through the address decoder
of the implemented IC. The address of the biosensor is sent using a serial data and a serial clock line
that is shown in Fig. 12. The external serial input/output signals of the implemented IC are handled by
a low cost microcontroller that offers a standard interface to a host computer (RS232 or USB).

Fig. 11. The evaluation board with the developed IC.

Fig. 12. The 6-bits of the biosensor address plus two reserved bits are sent along with a serial clock (top signal) and then the STB
signal is initiated to start the measurement procedure (bottom signal).

4. RESOLUTION AND SPEED

The difference between the final value of Cref and Cx is converted by the CSA to a voltage level as
was shown in Fig. 3 and 4. This voltage level can be converted in turn to a digital representation using
an ADC with appropriate resolution n according to the system specifications. The smaller capacitance
difference that can theoretically be discriminated is C S/2n. For example, if a capacitance difference
lower than 3fF has to be recognized and Cs is 10pF, then a 12-bit ADC has to be used since
10pF/212=2.44fF. An 11-bit resolution is not adequate because 10pF/211=4.88fF. Of course, the
effective number of bits of the ADC has to be taken into consideration instead of the static ADC
resolution but hopefully, these are approximately the same due to the low operating frequency. Should
the absolute capacitance of 640pF be read with the same sensitivity of about 2.5fF, an 18-bit ADC
would be required leading to a much higher cost implementation in terms of complication, die area and
power.
The linearity of the measurements achieved by the CSA circuit of Fig. 1 can be estimated by the
simulation results of Fig. 3 and 4. Based on these simulations, Tables 2 and 3 are constructed. The first
column of these tables, displays the specific capacitance values while the second column, displays the
corresponding voltage level when the CSA output has settled (when Φ is high). The difference between
the voltage levels of successive capacitance values are shown in the third column of these tables. This
difference is almost stable in Table 2 but gradually increases from 6.47mV to 6.51mV in the 150pF-
160pF capacitance range in Table 1. This may lead to a linearity error of up to 28fF in the 10pF range
which is worse than the 2.5fF resolution that can be theoretically achieved. Nevertheless, the maximum
resolution can be approximated if the equation (5) used to estimate the input capacitance is slightly
modified. For example, a 317.99mV measurement of the CSA output corresponds to a 151pF value but
measuring 376.4mV would lead the ADC output to an indication that corresponds to (376.4-
311.52)/6.47+150pF=160.028pF. This indication has a 28fF error which can be reduced close to the
theoretical limit if the 10.028pF value that is added to the 150pF offset is reduced by the factor
28/10000. The system accepting the DD and DB indications could check the range of the measured
value, pick an appropriate error factor (errfact) e.g., from a lookup table and perform the following
operation:

𝐶𝑠
𝐶𝑥 = 𝐷𝐵 ∙ 𝐶𝑠 + 𝐷𝐷 ∙ (1 − 𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡) (6)
2𝑛

In the arithmetic example above, if errfact=0.0028 the measured capacitance would be

159.9999216pF leading to an error below 2.5fF which is the resolution of the 12-bit ADC used. If
despite the redundant reference capacitors used, the indication DB is wrong then the absolute value of
Cx will be obviously wrong. Nevertheless, tracking the changes in the Cx after estimating its initial
indication will be quite accurate due to the second factor at the right part of equation (6).

Difference between
CSA Output the present and the
Capacitance Voltage Level previous level
(pF) (mV) (mV)
150 311.52
151 317.99 6.47
152 324.46 6.47
153 330.93 6.47
154 337.41 6.48
155 343.9 6.49
156 350.39 6.49
157 356.88 6.49
158 363.38 6.5
159 369.89 6.51
160 376.4 6.51

Table 1. Estimation of the CSA output level difference between successive parametric simulations for
input capacitance between 150 and 160pF.

Capacitance CSA Output Difference between

(pF) Voltage Level the present and the
 (mV) previous level
(mV)
500 311.38
501 313.17 1.79
502 314.96 1.79
503 316.74 1.78
504 318.53 1.79
505 320.30 1.79
506 322.09 1.79
507 323.88 1.79
508 325.67 1.79
509 327.46 1.79
510 329.24 1.78

Table 2. Estimation of the CSA output level difference between successive parametric simulations for
input capacitance between 500 and 510pF.

Let S be the number of samples required by a biosensor in a time interval T. If there are B sensors
that have to be successively read, then the latency for an individual read should not exceed T/(S∙B). In
a realistic scenario, if B=64 and each sensor has to be read in the worst case S=100 times/sec, then the
time needed for a single read should not exceed 1/6400=156usec and the ADC conversion rate should
be at least (S∙B)/T=6400 samples/sec. The readout system presented in Fig. 5, requires in the worst
case 12 sequential shifts until the correct reference capacitance is determined and the biosensor value is
accurately read. Each individual shift requires a time interval as the one shown in Fig. 3 or 4. This
interval can be shortened from 200usec to less than 10usec since the critical time that has to be
respected is the settling of the CSA output at the beginning of the Φ pulse (time point 100usec in Fig. 3
or 4) and this time is much shorter than 10usec. Thus, each biosensor read would require about 120usec
which is lower than the 156usec limit that was estimated in the above example.
A comparison between the proposed architecture and the features of the referenced approaches that
give such details is performed in Table 3. As can be seen from this table, higher resolution can be
achieved in [11] and [15] but both of these approaches operate on an input range of 10pF. This range
may acceptable by several applications but others including biosensor readout circuits operate in a
broader range because the initial capacitance of a single sensor may be arbitrary high as already
described in Section 1. A broader capacitance range is covered in [2] but the resolution in this case is
much worse (1pF). The proposed configurable reference capacitance scheme can be adopted by any
architecture that has an input range that is determined by the value of a reference capacitance.

Reference Resolution Range Conversion Time

Proposed 2.44fF (if 640pF 110us (worst case)
Architecture eq. 6 is
used)
[2] 0.01% 10nF.. Several ms (not
50nF exactly determined)
[11] 1fF 10pF 100ms
[15] 65aF 10pF 20us

Table 3. Comparison between the proposed architecture and referenced approaches

5. CURRENT AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

The architecture of a biosensor capacitance readout circuit that is based on a Charge Sensitive
Amplifier with self-configurable reference capacitor was presented in this paper. A broad range of
640pF input capacitance can be supported, with a biosensor access time as low as 10us and a sensitivity
that can be as good as 2.44fF using an ADC of only 12-bit resolution leading to a low area and power
implementation. None of the referenced approaches can cover such a broad capacitance range with an
error as low as 2.5fF. This high resolution is achieved by using a self-configurable reference
capacitance controlled by an FSM that can be implemented using a low complexity CPLD such as
Altera EPM7064SLC44-10.
The implementation of fast capacitive readout systems with high accuracy and linearity in a wide
capacitance range can be very useful for a large number of applications that rely on capacitive sensors
such as biosensors, pressure/strain sensors, accelerometers etc.
Future work of the authors will focus on implementing analogue front end circuits with high
linearity capable of covering a multi nF capacitance range with a resolution of few fF. In order to
achieve such a linear response real time post processing methods will be studied including piecewise
regression techniques and multilevel averaging with adjustable window length. The minimum die area
and power consumption of such readout systems is a very important target considering that they are
usually incorporated in portable applications.

6. Acknowledgment
This work has been developed in the context of the project Lab On Chip supported by Corallia Cluster
Initiative.

7. Conflict of Interest

None.

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