Design of a SOIMUMPs Inertial Sensor and readout Charge Amplifier

This paper presents the design and post-layout characteristics of a differential capacitance based inertial accelerometer This includes a MEMS based mechanical sensing element and a CMOS charge amplifier, which is the first stage of a readout circuit. The mechanical sensor is designed according to the SOIMUMPs fabrication process technology, and the readout circuit targeted AMS 0.35um technology. Post layout simulations indicated a +/-5G dynamic range, a maximum bandwidth of 1.58 kHz, non-linearity of 0.077% and a resolution of 10.5 uG/Hz^0.5. The readout circuit charge amplifier is fully differential and incorporated in a switched capacitor (SC) topology with CDS.