A switched-capacitor interface for capacitive sensors based on relaxation oscillators

A switched-capacitor (SC) interface for capacitive sensors based on a modified Martin's relaxation oscillator is proposed. The output signal is the duty-cycle of a pulse-width modulated square-wave voltage or a binary-coded digital signal which is directly related to the capacitance ratio of an unknown capacitance and reference capacitance. The circuit can be implemented in a monolithic IC form using CMOS technology. It requires a relatively small device count integrable onto a small chip area and its suited particularly for the on-chip interface circuitry for microprocessors.>