The trend towards ubiquitous electronics drives the development of autonomous hardware components with longer operating times. This work presents a novel ultra-low power analog sensor frontend (AFE) for environmental sensing applications. Relevant operation parameters like resolution (6 to 13 bit), sample rate (1 to 7.5 kS/s), voltage gain (−6 to 12 dB), transimpedance (1.5 to 12 M $ \boldsymbol {\Omega }$ ), and moving average (1 to 128 taps) are real-time programmable. Four input channels are separately configurable to process voltage, current and potentiometric signals of external or internal sources. The flexible channel-wise configuration enables processing of various signal types and therefore offers a versatile solution for sensors from the Internet-of-Things (IoT) market segment. The AFE integrates switched-capacitor amplifiers, 13 bit, 10 kS/s successive approximation analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC), bias references, oscillator, digital signal pre-processing and communication in a system-on-chip. A novel sensor power regime supports the flexible read-out of commercial IoT sensors, resulting in excellent power consumption. Fabricated samples in 180nm technology show an ultra-low power consumption of $8.8\,\mu \text{W}$ . The SAR ADC achieves 10.6 effective bits while consuming $1.8\,\mu \text{W}$ , resulting in a Figure-of-Merit of 116.0 fJ/conv.-step. Measurements with commercial sensors prove the AFE’s suitability for an energy-harvester-powered IoT environmental sensor node.

中文翻译：

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用于超低功耗环境传感的灵活多通道模拟前端

无处不在的电子产品的趋势推动了具有更长运行时间的自主硬件组件的发展。这项工作提出了一种用于环境传感应用的新型超低功耗模拟传感器前端 (AFE)。相关操作参数，如分辨率（6 至 13 位）、采样率（1 至 7.5 kS/s）、电压增益（-6 至 12 dB）、跨阻（1.5 至 12 M） $ \boldsymbol {\Omega }$ ) 和移动平均值（1 到 128 个抽头）是实时可编程的。四个输入通道可单独配置以处理外部或内部源的电压、电流和电位信号。灵活的通道配置支持处理各种信号类型，因此为物联网 (IoT) 细分市场的传感器提供了通用解决方案。AFE 在片上系统中集成了开关电容放大器、13 位、10 kS/s 逐次逼近模数转换器 (SAR ADC)、偏置基准、振荡器、数字信号预处理和通信。一种新颖的传感器电源机制支持商业物联网传感器的灵活读取，从而实现出色的功耗。采用 180nm 技术制造的样品显示出超低功耗 $8.8\,\mu \text{W}$ . SAR ADC 实现 10.6 有效位，同时消耗 $1.8\,\mu \text{W}$ ，导致品质因数为 116.0 fJ/conv.-step。使用商用传感器进行的测量证明 AFE 适用于能量收集器供电的物联网环境传感器节点。