Diode-based Thermal Rms Converter With On-chip Circuitry Fabricated Using Standard CMOS Technology

Abstract
A high frequency root-mean-square (RMS) converter composed of two matched themal elements and on-chip circuitry was fabricated using a foundry CMOS process and post-process micromachining techniques. The thermal elements are suspended single crystal silicon regions containing temperature sensing diodes heated by polysilicon resistors. One of the thermoelements is heated by the AC signal, while an integrated continous-time feedback network maintains a second element at the same temperature. The converter has a packaging-limited -3 dB bandwidth of 415 MHz, an RMS dynamic range of 53 dB, nonlinearity of 1%, a quiescent power dissipation under 1 mW, and occupies an area of approximately 400 /spl mu/m x 400 /spl mu/m. The thermoelements have a thermal resistance of up to 37,000 K/W.

This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit: