A Capacitance to Digital Converter Using Continuous Time ΔΣ Modulator for Microphone-Based Auscultation

This paper presents a novel Capacitance to Digital Converter (CDC) for ultra-low power microphone-based auscultation. The proposed CDC utilizes a continuous-time Capacitance to Voltage Converter (CVC) inside a delta-sigma (ΔΣ) modulator to perform the Delta operation. The multi-bit feedback in the embedded CVC with a capacitive DAC reduces the voltage swing at its output, which permits a larger capacitive signal gain and relaxes the noise requirements. The multi-bit feedback also allows a larger signal swing at the CVC output, and improves the dynamic range. The proposed CDC was fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS technology and was measured with a commercial capacitive sensor. Measurement results demonstrate that the proposed CDC consumes only 6.3 nJ while achieving 13-bit resolution. This corresponds to a FoM of 0.84 pJ/conversion-step.