A 1.8V 11μW CMOS smart humidity sensor for RFID sensing applications

Abstract

A fully-integrated humidity sensor for a smart RFID sensor platform has been realized in 0.16μm standard CMOS technology. It consists of a top-metal finger-structure capacitor covered with a humidity-sensitive layer, combined with a micro-power flexible sensor interface based on a second-order incremental delta-sigma converter. The interface can be easily reconfigured to compensate for process variation of the sensing element. In a measurement time of 10.2 ms, the interface performs a 13-bits capacitance-to-digital conversion while consuming only 5.85 μA from 1.8 V supply. In combination with the co-integrated sensor capacitor, it thus provides a humidity-to-digital conversion with a resolution of 0.1% RH in the range of 20% to 90% RH at only 107 nJ per measurement. This represents a significant improvement in energy efficiency compared to existing capacitive-sensor interfaces with comparable performance.