The temperature compensation of the silicon piezoresistive pressure sensor using the half-bridge technique

The major factor affecting the high performance applications of the piezoresistive pressure sensor is the temperature dependence of its pressure characteristics. The influence due to temperature variation is manifested as a change in the span, bridge resistance, and offset of the sensor. In order to reduce the thermal drifts of the offset and span of the piezoresistive pressure sensor, a Half-Bridge-Compensating (HBC) technique is presented in this paper. There are many advantages such as the temperature compensation of the sensor (typically lower than 1%), and a simple and low cost application circuit. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that both the output voltage and zero offset drift are much improved by the first-order HBC technique. The experimental results are matched to our theoretical analysis.