An inertial smart-sensor based on silicon nanowires for wireless sportive activity monitoring

This paper presents the design of a CMOS integrated circuit dedicated to the hybrid integration of a three-axis inertial smart-sensor with digital interface. Inertial sensing is achieved with an innovative low-cost technology that implements piezoresistive detection in MEMS devices with single-crystal silicon nanowires. The circuit includes a custom-designed analog front-end that achieves the bias and readout of the sensor, and an analog-to-digital converter with oversampling and integrated digital decimation. The obtained smart-sensor features a reduced output data rate that is suitable for a wireless sensor network with direct transmission of the raw data to a remote base station.