editor's blog
Subscribe Now

A Fully-Differential Accelerometer

Accelerometers are used for a wide variety of applications (which we’ll look at more specifically soon). Particularly demanding are automotive applications, not least because of the harsh conditions and huge amount of noise that they must tolerate. That noise can be electrical or simply “ambient vibration” that is not of interest.

Electrically, differential signaling is often used to reject common-mode noise. But one paper at ISSCC took the concept all the way back to the proof mass: a team from Robert Bosch split the proof mass, working then with what are nominally two identical half-masses. This sets up a differential signal flow from the get-go.

Of course, the masses aren’t going to be exactly the same; various differences are averaged out by swapping back and forth (to oversimplify). Chopping is also used to boost near-DC noise up away from the frequencies that matter, although the process does result in some noise being moved into the way instead of out of the way. In order to minimize the effect of this, they used a pseudo-random signal for chopping so that the energy of this noise is, to use their word, “smeared” across the spectrum, rendering it largely impotent.

You can find circuit details and results in the ISSCC proceedings, paper 22.1

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Dec 6, 2023
Optimizing a silicon chip at the system level is crucial in achieving peak performance, efficiency, and system reliability. As Moore's Law faces diminishing returns, simply transitioning to the latest process node no longer guarantees substantial power, performance, or c...
Dec 6, 2023
Explore standards development and functional safety requirements with Jyotika Athavale, IEEE senior member and Senior Director of Silicon Lifecycle Management.The post Q&A With Jyotika Athavale, IEEE Champion, on Advancing Standards Development Worldwide appeared first ...
Nov 6, 2023
Suffice it to say that everyone and everything in these images was shot in-camera underwater, and that the results truly are haunting....

featured video

Dramatically Improve PPA and Productivity with Generative AI

Sponsored by Cadence Design Systems

Discover how you can quickly optimize flows for many blocks concurrently and use that knowledge for your next design. The Cadence Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer is a revolutionary, AI-driven, automated approach to chip design flow optimization. Block engineers specify the design goals, and generative AI features within Cadence Cerebrus Explorer will intelligently optimize the design to meet the power, performance, and area (PPA) goals in a completely automated way.

Click here for more information

featured paper

Power and Performance Analysis of FIR Filters and FFTs on Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs

Sponsored by Intel

Learn about the Future of Intel Programmable Solutions Group at intel.com/leap. The power and performance efficiency of digital signal processing (DSP) workloads play a significant role in the evolution of modern-day technology. Compare benchmarks of finite impulse response (FIR) filters and fast Fourier transform (FFT) designs on Intel Agilex® 7 FPGAs to publicly available results from AMD’s Versal* FPGAs and artificial intelligence engines.

Read more

featured chalk talk

Portable Medical Devices and Connected Health
Decentralized healthcare is moving from hospitals and doctors’ offices to the patients’ home and office and in the form of personal, wearable, and connected devices. In this episode of Chalk Talk, Amelia Dalton and Roger Bohannan from Littelfuse examine the components, functions and standards for a variety of portable connected medical devices. They investigate how Littelfuse can help you navigate the development of your next portable connected medical design.
Jun 26, 2023
19,778 views