A low noise capacitance to voltage readout circuit based on active feedback charge sensitive amplifier for micro-gyro

Trans-impedance amplifier (TIA) based capacitance–voltage (C–V) readout circuits are widely used in micro-machined gyroscopes’ control system. In this work, the noise performance of a TIA and charge sensitive amplifier (CSA) based C–V readout circuit is analyzed in detail. The theoretical derivation and simulation experiments carried out in this paper show that the thermal noise of high value feedback resistors in TIA dominates the output noise of the circuit, while a CSA-based readout circuit can overcome this shortcoming. Then, a CSA-based C–V readout circuit is designed with a 1.8 V transistor on a 180 nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor. This C–V-based readout circuit occupies an area of 0.039 mm2, which is smaller than the area of a 0603 package resistor. When 1 V bias voltage (Vb) is added to the capacitors under test, the tested C–V gain of this circuit is as high as 225 dB, and the tested output noise of the circuit is less than 150 nV/Hz. Finally, the fabricated chip achieved a resolution of 840 zF/Hz at Vb as low as 1 V. This CSA-based C–V readout circuit has more advantages in terms of noise and area over the TIA circuit and is more suitable for integration into the interface integrated circuit for micro-gyroscopes.