The increasing performance of smart microsystems merging sensors, signal
processing and wireless communication promises to have a pervasive
impact during the coming decade. These autonomous microsystems nd
applications in sport evaluation, health care, environmental monitoring
and automotive s- tems. They gather data from the physical world,
convert them to electrical form, compensate for interfering variables or
non-linearities, and either act - rectly on them or transfer it to other
systems. Most often, these sensor systems are developed for a speci c
application. This approach leads to a high rec- rent design cost. A
generic front-end architecture, where only the sensors and the
microcontroller software are customized to the selected application,
would reduce the costs signi cantly. This work presents a new generic
architecture for autonomous sensor nodes. The modular design methodology
provides a exible way to build a complete sensor interface out of con
gurable blocks. The settings of these blocks can be optimized according
to the varying needs of the application. Furthermore, the system can
easily be expanded with new building blocks. The modular system is
illustrated in a Generic Sensor Interface Chip (GSIC) for capa- tive
sensors. Many con guration settings adapt the interface to a broad range
of applications. The GSIC is optimized for ultra low power consumption.
It achieves an ON-state current consumption of 40?A.
