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High Accuracy Resistance to Current Circuit Design of Resistive Gas Sensor

Interface for Biomedical Applications

Conference Paper · September 2015

DOI: 10.1109/ICABME.2015.7323250

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Zeinab Hijazi Maurizio Valle

Lebanese International University Università degli Studi di Genova
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 High Accuracy Resistance to Current Circuit Design
for Resistive Gas Sensor Biomedical Applications
Zeinab Hijazia,b, Daniele Cavigliaa, Maurizio Vallea
a b
DITEN, COSMIC Lab
University of Genova
Genova, Italy
hijazi.zeinab@hotmail.com
Abstract— In this paper current accuracy study for
resistance to current conversion circuit, is presented. The circuit
has the role of fixing the voltage across the resistance of the
sensor. The resistive gas sensor interface circuit is proposed to
analyze the breath; this later has the ability to indicate more
than one diseases in biomedical applications. Thus, the sensed gas
in the breath is transformed into a resistance value and then to a
current one for further analysis. As a result, these information
has to be processed paying attention to the accuracy of the data.
Keywords—gas sensor; interface circuit; current accuracy;
voltage to current converter; mixed signal ;
I. INTRODUCTION
Even though, the diagnosing and monitoring of a certain
disease depend on regular clinical analysis of the body fluids
(urine, blood, sputum), breath analysis is less complicated
compared to serum or urine and is a more efficient and
developed technique for disease diagnosis. Direct information
on respiratory function are only obtained by breath analysis.
This type of analysis gives direct information about the
respiratory system and is able to be monitored effectively in
real time [1]. Human breath analysis methodologies measure
the concentration of a certain gas allowing a quick and
accurate diagnosis. Breath test can detect lots of diseases such
as Lactose Intolerance, Helicobacter Pylori, Fructose
Intolerance, Bacterial Overgrowth Syndrome (SIBO), etc...
Lactose Intolerance Breath Test reveals a problem in
digesting lactose which is a sugar found in milk and milk
products. If the lactose is not digested, it will be fermented by
bacteria, in this case, the breath analyzer detects the release of
high levels of hydrogen. In a similar way, difficulty absorbing
the fructose (a sugar found in onions, artichokes, pears wheat
or sweetener in some drinks) is detected.
Helicobacter Pylori (H. Pylori) Breath Test finds out a
bacteria in the inner lining of the stomach or duodenum. This
type of bacteria can cause chronic inflammation. If H. Pylori
is presented then CO2 is liberated into the bloodstream and
then is carried to the lungs where it will be released and
electronically analyzed.
Whereas, in (SIBO) the uncontrolled growing of bacteria
can cause small intestine bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). If the
Hussein Chibleb
EDST- Microelectronics Research Lab
Lebanese University
Beirut, Lebanon
Breathe
Breathe Gas Chamber
Breathe
Hygroscopic containing
Material Resistive
Mouth Piece Gas Sensor
Signals
Electronic
Interface Display
Unit
Signal
Fig.1. Proposed system block diagram.
bacteria are fermenting in small intestine, it will exit then
detected in breath.
Breath analysis tool is unique, novel, and it operates on the
principle of resistive chemo-sensing. In Fig.1 a flow diagram
represents the working procedure of the breathe analyzer.
Prescreening patients to detect specific diseases is allowed by
the selectivity of the nano-sensor [2]. Due to their high
sensitivity and selectivity, Metal Oxide sensors (MOX)
represent a popular technological choice when dealing with
sensor array. (MOX) gas sensors are used in assortment of
applications such as medical diagnosis, food quality
assessment, environmental monitoring and robotics [3].
A gas sensor behaves as an electrical resistor. Since, this
type of sensors is based on direct analyte adsorption and
charge transfer processes between the gas molecules and the
MOX surface, the gas sensing element causes a simple
electrical resistance variation [4]. The transducer changes the
concentration of the sensed gas into a value of resistor.
Analyzing the resistance is required to detect the sensed gas.
The value of the sensor’s resistor should be changed to a
voltage one in order to enter the analog to digital converter.
This is achieved through changing the resistance into a current
signal and then converting the current signal into a voltage
one. The block diagram in Fig. 2 describes the interface circuit
required to analyze the breath signal.
To convert a resistance into a voltage signal suitable to be
converted into digital data, it is necessary to get accurate
information from the sensor in order to detect gases of
interest.
Gas Sensor
Array
Sensor Variable
Resistor
Resistance Current to
to Current Voltage
Conversion Conversion
Interface Circuitry
A/D Converter
FPGA Result
Memory
Fig.2. Breath analyser mixed signal interface circuit
Improving the gas sensing system is required. In respect
of such improvements, each sub module of the circuit
interface has to be optimized. In this paper, a first step
towards optimizing the whole gas sensing system, for
identifying and measuring the gases released in breath, is
presented. To achieve high current accuracy, the resistance to
current block is designed and the accuracy of current is
measured.
II. STATE OF THE ART AND CIRCUIT SPECIFICATIONS
It is not a trivial problem to identify metabolite signals and
measure them in trace concentrations. Only 30 out of 400
compounds included in the human breath are specified. The
majority of these gases are indicators of more than one disease
[5] - [7].
In order to diagnose a disease it is necessary to identify and
measure the released gas. So mixed mode interface circuit is
required for such analysis. The sensor signal have to be
detected through analog circuitry, and measured via digital
processing as explained before. Till that end, different
interface circuit architectures are proposed.
In [2], a prototype level breathe analyzer for ammonia gas
(NO3) detection in exhaled human breath was designed. The
proposed prototype is simple and uses chemo-resistive
sensors, but this system lack the digital processing unit and
data analyzer to measure the quantity of the concentration of
the gas. Also, this circuit needs lots of modifications to be
designed as IC level as well as it is sensitive to one type of
gas.
Whereas in [8], a read out IC, low power, wide dynamic
range circuit with high selectivity array of metal oxide gas,
was proposed. But this interface circuit, unlike systems
proposed in literature requires calibration process to set the
voltage across the sensor.
In [9], a low power architecture for detecting pollutants is
proposed. But this architecture requires a great number of
delicate devices, like ADC and DACs, a complex digital
processing, and calibration.
In [10] - [13] an efficient, low cost, wide dynamic range
integrated circuit ASIC for environmental monitoring is
presented. This architecture doesn’t require any calibration
phase thanks to enhanced oscillator approach and to
resistance to time conversion architecture.
Obviously, increasing the opportunity of detecting more
gases of interest and specifying more compounds in human
breathe through using array of gas sensor in addition to wide
dynamic range interface circuit is of much importance.
Simple, uncalibrated interface circuit and read out circuit
which is integrable on chip for breath analysis, introduces big
challenges.
Considering the advantages of the resistance enhanced
oscillator and that of MOX sensors which are disease markers
and environmental pollutants such as (NO, CO2, etc...) at the
same time, we propose to improve such architecture presented
in [11] and in [12] to be compatible with breathe analyzing
purpose. The interface circuit is required to be fast, to have
wide dynamic range (500Ω to 1GΩ) in order to fulfill all
gasses included in the breath, and is designed for gas sensing
applications without any need of calibration [12], [13].
As a consequence, current accuracy study is represented in
this paper. Large dynamic range (kilo ohms to tens of gaga
ohms) is obtained by increasing the precision of the resistance
to a voltage conversion circuit. Therefore, to convert a
resistance into a voltage signal suitable to be changed to
digital data, it is necessary to get accurate information from
the sensor in order to detect gases of interest.
III. INTERFACE CIRCUIT DESIGN DETAILS
A. Interface Circuit Overview
To guarantee an accurate sensing operation, a buffer is
used to bias the sensor with a constant voltage. In such way,
the voltage across the sensor is fixed, and so, the sensor’s
resistance is converted into an electrical current signal. The
resulted current (Vsens/Rsens) gets in or out a current mirror
which has to deliver the current to a resettable integrator with
good accuracy. Through the integrator, this current signal will
be converted to a voltage one, as a consequence, to a digital
data by the voltage to period analog to digital converter
(ADC). The gas, which is described electronically by the
sensor’s resistance (Rsens), is then identified and computed by
the period waveform resulted from the ADC such that Rsens is
proportional to this period.
B. Design Considerations and Requirments
Converting the data sensed by the sensor from one
electrical signal to another have to preserve precise
information. To achieve this precision, the voltage buffer,
responsible to fix the voltage across the sensor, is designed.
The output resistance of this configuration is analyzed and
measured as well. This output resistance has to be as high as
possible to guarantee that there is no current loss (Imirror has to
be equal to Isens), so that, the current can be send accurately to Isens= (Vref-Vss)/Rsens (1)
the current mirror. Working with wide resistance range results i0x = Ix – gmVgs (2)
in large current variation. The current mirror should be able to Vgs = Vg – Vs= - IxRsens (1+Av) (3)
support a wide current range extended between 2mA and 1nA Ex = i0x.r0 +Ix Rsens (4)
when Rsens varies from 500Ω to 1GΩ with enough accuracy.
Rout = Ex /Ix = (1+gm (1+Av) Rsens).r0 +Rsens (5)
Hence, to design a high accurate current mirror, we
recommend to optimize the resistance to current block and
analyze the factors affecting the resulting currents through
measuring its output resistance. Fig. 3 shows the resistance to
current configuration circuit R-to-I circuit details.
C. Voltage toCurrent Conversion OTA Design
The resistance of the resistive gas sensor is biased with a
voltage reference specified by high DC gain, low bandwidth
Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) in voltage to
current configuration.

Fig.4. Schematic design of Capacitor Multiplier compensation OTA

D Ix

i0x Ex
r0 +
gmVgs
V+
(a) (b)
G -

Fig. 3. (a) Resistance to current configuration circuit (b) modelling the R-toI
circuit as ideal current generator
The OTA is designed in 0.35µmAMS CMOS technology
and used to bias the sensor such that with 1 Volts constant
voltage according to (1). This OTA is a high-gain, low
bandwidth, low-noise PMOS input pair, two stage Capacitor
Multiplier compensated amplifier. Fig. 4 represents the
architecture of the designed Capacitor Multiplier
Compensated OTA.
The capacitor multiplier compensation is used due to its
advantage of having low compensation capacitance. The
capacitance used in this configuration is of value 0.7pF. This
OTA has 107dB DC gain, 4Hz Bandwidth and 1.7MHz Gain
Bandwidth.
D. Small Signal Analysis
In order to approximate the nonlinear behavior of the
circuit in Fig.3 to a linear one, so that, to analyze the factors
affecting the output resistance of the resistance to current
conversion circuit, small signal analysis study in Fig.5 is
done.
The small signal equations listed below are used to
determine the expression of the output resistance.
Substituting (2) and (3) in (4) then dividing Ex/Ix (the test
voltage over the test current), the expression of the output
resistance is that in (5).
Av (V+ - V -) S
Rsens
V-
Fig. 5. Small signal analysis of the voltage to current configuration circuit
Where, i0x and gmVgs are the currents resulted at node D,
when splitting Ix the test current of the test generator Ex. gm
and r0 represent the Transconductance and the channel
resistor of the nmos transistor respectively. V gs is the gate to
source voltage, Rsens the sensor’s resistor and Av is the DC
gain of the OTA.
The expression of Rout shows the dependence of the OTA
DC gain Av (107dB), r0 (have minimum value in kΩ, Rsens
the sensor resistance (500Ω till 1GΩ) on the output
resistance, whereas, gm is the only factor ranging from mS to
uS.Then, approximating this expression to ‘gmAvRsensr0’, can
give indications about how high the output resistance of the
R-to-I interface circuit can be.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
A. Measurement of the Output Resistance
The proposed current mirror have to support a wide
current range from 2mA till 1nA when Vsens is fixed to 1V
and Rsens varies through more than 6 decades from 500Ω to
1GΩ, to detect all gases of interest with a good accuracy.
The resistance to current conversion circuit presented in
Fig.3 is designed and simulated in ORCAD PSPICE.
According to (5), the high output resistance assures the
accuracy of the current which have to enter the current
mirror. Measuring and simulating the output resistance in
SPICE, result in a good current accuracy.
Fig.6. represents the SPICE simulation of Rout as
function of Rsens. The graph shows the high values of Rout
which starts with tens of Gaga ohms for Rsens equals to 500Ω
till tens of Tera when Rsens reaches 1GΩ. The study verified
the high value of output resistance which is essential to
model the R-to-I circuit as ideal current source.
1,200
1,000
800
Rout(GΩ)
V. CONCLUSION
In this work, design and simulation of resistance to
current conversion is presented. Simulation results show high
accuracy of the current when compared with the theoretical
expected values. Accurate current source model of R-to-I
guaranties the correctness of the type of the sensed gas and
raises the proportion to classify wider range of sensors. This
work is a first step towards the implementation of simple
breath analyzer device for suitable detection and measure of
the gases exhaled in human breathe for disease diagnosis
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