Novel Modified De-Sauty Autobalancing Bridge-Based Analog Interfaces for Wide-Range Capacitive Sensor Applications

In this paper, we propose novel fully analog uncalibrated readout circuits for wide-range capacitance estimation. The working principle is based on a modified De-Sauty ac bridge configuration where two capacitances and two resistances are employed. Through the use of a voltage controlled resistor and of a suitable feedback loop, an accurate estimation over a wide range of the sensor capacitance variation is possible, also without the knowledge of the other bridge component values. The first two proposed solutions are able to estimate, experimentally, ~1.5 decades (optimized range: [25-840 nF]) and more than 3 decades [900 pF-1.1 μF] of capacitive variations, respectively, ensuring, continuously, the bridge equilibrium condition; the third interface allows the evaluation of the sensor capacitance also outside this condition, increasing the capacitive variation decades to more than 4 [81 pF-1.1 μF]. The proposed topologies have been also modified to detect the capacitive sensor parasitic resistance. In this case, experimental results on PCB have demonstrated the capability to simultaneously estimate ~ 1.7 capacitive [2-100 nF] and 1.5 resistive variation decades [33 kΩ-1.2 MΩ]. Finally, a suitable optimization of the operating range of the first proposed solution, obtained through a proper passive components sizing, has been performed with the aim to employ the commercial humidity sensor HCH-1000 in a high accuracy (11.4 bits) RH% detection.