Abstract
Charge sensitive preamplifiers are indispensable components of transducer-interfacing systems as they are responsible for amplifying the signals detected by the sensor. The rapid scaling of MOSFETs in the modern era has made it quite difficult to design a charge-sensitive preamplifier that has high effective resistance, consumes low power, generates very little noise, and can operate at low frequencies. This work will target to design a charge sensitive preamplifier at a supply voltage of 1.1 V using the 65 nm technology node that is supposed to operate at low levels of frequency in the range of 10–100 Hz with a high gain and high net resistance. The proposed design was found to produce a maximum gain of 235 dB and a maximum effective resistance of 270 GΩ and having a very low value of noise spectral density (<0.7 mV/√Hz). The power consumed by the proposed design was also in the range of nW. The working of the amplifier is illustrated in a practical scenario by interfacing it with a tactile sensor which would be used in detection of submucosal tumours by adjudging their stiffness. The sensor is designed as a layered shell with piezoelectric material sandwiched between two layers of electric conductors. The modelled sensor is then interpreted in terms of a current source with a resistance and capacitance in parallel to interface it with the designed charge sensitive preamplifier. The output of the sensor is difference in potential in the range of a few mV which is proportional to the pressure acting upon it. The mentioned sensor is simulated in COMSOL, and the charge amplifier is designed in Cadence.
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Acknowledgement
The authors of this paper would like to thank IIITA seed grant no. IIITA/RO/323/2021—for providing the software infrastructure used in the simulations.
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Bag, K., Deep, K., Verma, S., Yadav, S.P., Goswami, M., Kandpal, K. (2022). Design of a Low-Voltage Charge-Sensitive Preamplifier Interfaced with Piezoelectric Tactile Sensor for Tumour Detection. In: Shah, A.P., Dasgupta, S., Darji, A., Tudu, J. (eds) VLSI Design and Test. VDAT 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1687. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21514-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21514-8_3
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