A CMOS-based tactile sensor for continuous blood pressure monitoring

A monolithic integrated tactile sensor array is presented, which is used to perform non-invasive blood pressure monitoring of a patient. The advantage of this device compared to a hand cuff based approach is the capability of recording continuous blood pressure data. The capacitive, membrane-based sensor device is fabricated in an industrial CMOS-technology combined with post-CMOS micromachining. The capacitance change is detected by a Σ -modulator. The modulator is operated at a sampling rate of 128kS/s and achieves a resolution of 12bit with an external decimation filter and an OSR of 128. © 2004 IEEE.