Low power portable device for

high precision electrical impedance detection

C. L. Petersen∗
SensaWave Technology Inc., BC, Canada

A low power digital device for electrical impedance measurements has been developed. It is
intended for embedded high precision sensor interface applications, but will also operate as a general
purpose phase sensitive detector. It integrates an automatic least mean square (LMS) AC bridge
with a digital dual phase lock-in amplifier, and is capable of measuring electrical impedance with
a precision of 0.001% (10ppm). Capacitance measurements with attofarad resolution have been
realized using the device.

I. INTRODUCTION other arm of the bridge is driven by the AC voltage

VB = B cos(ωt + φ), (2)
Many electrical sensors are interfaced with either re-
sistive or capacitive bridge circuits. These circuits are where the amplitude B and phase φ are adjusted auto-
balanced by adjusting the values of discrete passive com- matically by the error cancellation algorithm until the
ponents. This approach is specific to particular sensors, bridge error signal is as small as possible.
and full balance is often unobtainable due to the complex VB can also be expressed in terms of the in-phase and
nature of the sensor impedance. In addition, long term quadrature VA signals:
sensor drift and component aging can cause significant
VB = z1 A cos(ωt) + z2 A sin(ωt) = Re(zAe−iωt ), (3)
changes in the circuit output offset over time.
This paper describes an alternative approach to sensor where z = z1 + iz2 is a complex number representing the
interfacing that draws inspiration from several efforts to bridge balance ratio.
automate AC bridges1,2 . While these efforts led to pre- The error cancellation algorithm determines the bridge
cise auto-balancing solutions, they were bulky and had balance using an iterative stochastic gradient search
slow feedback that made real time measurements diffi- algorithm4 , continuously adjusting z through
cult. Faster feedback is here achieved by introducing a
least mean square stochastic gradient technique3,4 , and znew = zold + χVerr Aeiωt , (4)
a smaller form factor by integration on a single digital where Verr is the bridge error signal and χ is a constant
micro-processor, thereby providing a device suitable for factor chosen small enough to allow convergence of the
embedded sensing applications. iterative procedure.
The device works with any type of impedance, and op- Referring again to Fig. 2, the bridge error signal, Verr ,
erates in two stages; The sensor bridge is first balanced is given by
using a fast error cancellation algorithm that quickly pro-
vides an approximation to the ratio (both in-phase and VA VB
Verr = Zk ( + ), (5)
quadrature) of the sensor and reference impedance, and ZA ZB
then the bridge error signal is tracked with a high-gain where Zk is the parallel combination of all impedances
dual phase lock-in amplifier to provide a precise determi- at the center of the bridge,
nation of the sensor impedance in real time.
1 1 1 −1
Zk = ( + + ) . (6)
ZG ZA ZB
II. CONCEPT AND OPERATION The impedance ZG represents stray capacitances and the
bias current path of the input amplifier.
Fig. 1 shows a block diagram of the electrical As shown in Fig. 1, the bridge error signal is fed to two
impedance detection system. It is connected to a multiplier stages, which multiply the error signal with the
two armed bridge consisting of an unknown (sensor) output signal VA and its 90 degree phase shifted quadra-
impedance and a reference impedance. Balance is ture, respectively. The two multipliers form the the heart
achieved by adjusting the voltages on the arms of the of the dual-phase lock-in amplifier. The output from the
bridge, instead of adjusting the values of bridge circuit multipliers can be expressed:
elements as in conventional sensor interfaces.
VA VB
Fig. 2 shows the equivalent circuit elements of the Vmul = Verr Aeiωt = Zk ( + )Aeiωt . (7)
bridge interface. The bridge has two arms with ZA ZB
impedances ZA and ZB . An AC drive voltage Vmul is next fed into low pass filters whose time constants
are chosen to strongly attenuate the waveform frequency,
VA = A cos(ωt) (1) resulting in a DC signal given by
is applied to one arm of the bridge. This drive voltage 1 1 z
is kept constant during the balancing of the bridge. The vlowpass = Zk ( + )A2 , (8)
2 ZA ZB
 2

Sensor DC input
impedance 90
deg.
Lock-In
channel 1
Reference Lock-In
impedance channel 2
In-phase
Error
balance
cancellation
algorithm Quadrature
balance

FIG. 1: Block diagram of the electrical impedance detection device.

and the final lock-in amplifier output is This provides a very accurate method to track changes
in electrical impedance. If the sensor bridge is primarily
2vlowpass 1 z capacitive, Eq. 14 can conveniently be rewritten in terms
verr = = Zk ( + )A. (9)
A ZA ZB of capacitance as
In a real measurement situation Verr will contain broad- z2 − z1
CA = (verr − z0 )CB , (15)
band noise, DC offset etc., but such spurious components v2 − v1
are eliminated in the low pass filter stage leading to Eq. 9.
The error signal measured with the lock-in can be thus where CA = 1/iωZA and CB = 1/iωZB .
be expressed The equations given above rely on interpolation be-
tween two measurement points. Linear regression can
verr = Cz + D, (10) instead be used to determine C and D from a greater
number of measurements, thereby increasing the preci-
where C = Zk A/ZB and D = Zk A/ZA . The zero point sion of the method. The equations are easily modified to
balance ratio, z0 , fulfills allow for this.

Cz0 + D = 0. (11)
III. IMPLEMENTATION
The error cancellation algorithm will settle on a value
zauto close to z0 . We can then determine z0 with greater
The impedance detection scheme was implemented on
precision by measuring the lock-in error signal at two
an ARM based micro-controller using 32 bit integer arith-
settings of the balance near zauto , z1 = zauto − ∆z and
metics. Input and output signal were generated by 12 bit
z2 = zauto + ∆z:
DAC and ADC devices, and super-sampling used to pro-
v1 = Cz1 + D and v2 = Cz2 + D. (12) vide a theoretical 20bit balance ratio resolution. The
frequency range for the device was 10 Hz - 10 kHz,
These equations determine C and D through and the output signal amplitude was 0 - 4 V peak-to-
peak. The analog output stage consisted of two DC-
v2 − v1
C= , D = v1 − Cz1 , (13) coupled micro-power buffer amplifiers, while the input
z2 − z1 stage was a DC-coupled actively guarded ESD-protected
and with Eq. 11 we can therefore determine z0 = −D/C. micro-power operational amplifier with an low input bias
This leads to a significantly better approximation to the current of 200 fA. A 100 MΩ resistor to ground served as
zero balance point than zauto , due to the extreme se- the input bias current path. This input design was cho-
lectivity and noise suppression of the lock-in amplifier, sen to allow direct interfacing to a wide range of sensor
and the use of high signal amplification leading into the types. A secondary AC-coupled input amplifier with a
lock-in amplifier, made possible by the initial balancing fixed gain of 1,000 was used to amplify the error signal
performed by the error cancellation algorithm. leading into the dual phase lock-in amplifier.
Once the zero balance point z0 is determined, changes The use of micro-power devices throughout enabled the
in the relative impedance can be continuously derived entire device to operate from a single 5 V 150 mA supply,
from the lock-in error signal through: making it possible to power it directly from a standard
USB interface.
ZA C C z2 − z1 The device was controlled from a personal computer
= = = (verr − z0 )−1 . (14) via a serial (RS232) connection, and was able to operate
ZB D verr − Cz0 v2 − v1
 3

Acos(ωt) 500 mV. A linear dependence is observed, as expected

VA from Eq. 10, and a precise determination of the zero
ZA A point balance, and hence the capacitance ratio, is pos-
ZG Verr Error sible through Eq. 15. In this example the sensor quadra-
cancellation ture balance ratio was negligible and the in-phase zero
algorithm point balance was 0.0293, corresponding to a sensor ca-
ZB pacitance of 146.5 fF. The resolution of the measurement
B, φ
VB was 10 aF, corresponding to ratio resolution of approxi-
Bcos(ωt + φ) mately 0.001% (10ppm).
Convergence of the error cancellation algorithm was
achieved after 100 ms of operation, after which the er-
FIG. 2: The bridge error cancellation concept.
ror signal amplitude was typically 100 µV. The balance
determined by the error cancellation algorithm was typ-
2000
ically only accurate to approximately 0.01%. The use of
Re verr
1500 the lock-in amplifier thus improved the resolution by an
Zero point order of magnitude.
Lock-in error signal [µV]

1000 balance The device demonstrated similar performance on in-

500 ductive and resistive sensor bridges.

0
V. CONCLUSIONS
-500 Im verr

-1000 A low power portable device capable of high precision

-1500
-2000
0.0225 0.025 0.0275 0.03 0.0325 0.035
In-phase balance ratio
FIG. 3: The bridge lock-in error signal near the zero balance
point of a capacitive bridge.
in three distinct modes; as a dual phase lock-in amplifier,
an auto-balancing bridge, and a simple DC voltmeter, as
illustrated in Fig. 1.
IV. RESULTS
Fig. 3 shows how the measured lock-in error signal
varies with the balance ratio in the vicinity of the bal-
ance set by the error cancellation algorithm. This mea-
surement was made on a bridge consisting of a capac-
itive sensor and a 5 pF silvered mica reference capaci-
tor at a frequency of 1 kHz and a signal amplitude of
impedance measurements has been developed. It works
by first using an automatic error cancellation algorithm
to seek the zero point balance in a two-arm AC bridge and
then subsequently tracking lock-in error signal variations
near the balance point. The device is capable of measur-
ing electrical impedance with a precision of 10ppm.
The bridge can always be balanced because the relative
phase of the two drive signals VA and VB can be arbitrar-
ily set by the error cancellation algorithm. For example,
this means that a capacitor can be used as reference even
if the sensor impedance is resistive, thereby potentially
reducing Johnson noise and improving temperature sta-
bility of the measurements. In combination with the sim-
ple hardware implementation, the device thus provides
a general purpose, precise and portable sensor interface
suitable for a range of embedded applications.
The sensitivity of the interface can be further increased
by adding a 10-100× gain input amplifier. This will
increase the total gain in the lock-in channel to 10,000
- 100,000, and provide an extremely sensitive detection
system.

∗
Electronic address: chris.p@sensawave.com Record, New York 4, 96 (1960).
1 4
R. E. Cavicchi and R. H. Silsbee, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 59, M. Dutta, A. Rakshit, and B. S. N., IEI Journal 84, 26
176 (1988). (2003).
2
J. Vejdelek and S. Dado, Meas. Sci. Rev 3, 65 (2003).
3
B. Widrow and M. E. Hoff, IRE WESCON Convention