In this work, an ASIC (application specific integrated circuits) transducer circuit for field modulated giant magnetoresistance (GMR) sensors was designed and fabricated using a 0.18- CMOS process. The transducer circuits consist of a frequency divider, a digital phase shifter, an instrument amplifier, and an analog mixer. These comprise a mix of analog and digital circuit techniques. The compact chip size of 1.5 mm × 1.5 mm for both analog and digital parts was achieved using the TSMC18 1P6M (1-polysilicon 6-metal) process design kit, and the characteristics of the system were simulated using an HSpice simulator. The output of the transducer circuit is the result of the first harmonic detection, which resolves the modulated field using a phase sensitive detection (PSD) technique and is proportional to the measured magnetic field. When the dual-bridge GMR sensor is driven by the transducer circuit with a current of 10 mA at 10 kHz, the observed sensitivity of the field sensor is 10.2 mV/V/Oe and the nonlinearity error was 3% in the linear range of ±1 Oe. The performance of the system was also verified by rotating the sensor system horizontally in earth’s magnetic field and recording the sinusoidal output with respect to the azimuth angle, which exhibits an error of less than ±0.04 Oe. These results prove that the ASIC transducer is suitable for driving the AC field modulated GMR sensors applied to geomagnetic measurement.
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February 2017
Research Article|
February 24 2017
A novel CMOS transducer for giant magnetoresistance sensors
Van Su Luong;
Van Su Luong
1Graduate Institute of Mechatronic Engineering/Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Taipei University of Technology
, Taipei 10608, Taiwan
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Chih-Cheng Lu;
Chih-Cheng Lu
a)
1Graduate Institute of Mechatronic Engineering/Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Taipei University of Technology
, Taipei 10608, Taiwan
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Jing-Wen Yang;
Jing-Wen Yang
1Graduate Institute of Mechatronic Engineering/Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Taipei University of Technology
, Taipei 10608, Taiwan
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Jen-Tzong Jeng
Jen-Tzong Jeng
a)
2Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences
, Kaohsiung 80778, Taiwan
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a)
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic addresses: [email protected], Tel.: +886-(02)-2771-2171 ext. 2067, Fax: +886-(02)-2731 7191, and [email protected].
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 88, 025004 (2017)
Article history
Received:
September 27 2016
Accepted:
January 29 2017
Citation
Van Su Luong, Chih-Cheng Lu, Jing-Wen Yang, Jen-Tzong Jeng; A novel CMOS transducer for giant magnetoresistance sensors. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 1 February 2017; 88 (2): 025004. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4976025
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