A Compact, Dual Channel Flow-based Differential Pressure Sensor with mPa Resolution and Sub-10 mW Power Consumption

In this work, we propose a single-chip sensor for the detection of two extremely low, independent differential pressures. The operating principle consists in measuring the airflow induced by the pressure through a channel of sub-millimeter cross-section [1]. The airflow is measured by differential thermal flow sensors, implementing a recently proposed drift-free offset compensation approach. Use of a low-noise, low-power readout interface, integrated on the same chip as the sensing structures, allowed the achievement of resolutions of 1.29 mPa, which are one order of magnitude lower than state-of-art devices. This performance has been obtained with power consumptions suitable for battery-powered applications.