Practical Voltage References for Precision Instrumentation Applications

Integrated voltage references are essential building blocks of precision instrumentation and mixed-signal systems as they set their absolute accuracy, stability, and reliability. This talk describes the evolution of such references from architecture development and circuit design to silicon validation and production release, with an emphasis on achieving excellent DC performance. The talk will begin with a discussion of precision reference topologies and their journey from whiteboard concepts to first silicon. Then, the focus will shift to the longer (and often more challenging) journey from first silicon to released product: characterization, qualification, and high-volume production testing, all of which are necessary to deliver reliable performance in the field at scale.

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Caspar van Vroonhoven

Analog Devices

Keynote Speaker

Caspar van Vroonhoven received M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology. He is currently a Director of Mixed-Signal IC Design at Analog Devices, focusing on high-precision circuit design for battery management. Previously, he worked at Texas Instruments and Linear Technology, specializing in precision circuit design and current sensing. He has authored 14 papers, received best paper awards from ISSCC, Transducers, and IEEE Sensors conferences, and holds nine patents.

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A Fully Integrated CMOS GMR Biosensing Platform with On-Chip Magnetic Excitation

CMOS technology continues to expand its role in biological sensing, enabling integrated platforms that push detection toward smaller scales and higher throughput. Giant magnetoresistive (GMR) sensors are especially promising for point-of-care diagnostics due to their CMOS compatibility and negligible magnetic background, but their μΩ-level signals on kΩ baselines impose extreme analog front-end requirements and have traditionally relied on external components (e.g., sensors, electromagnets, etc.). This work presents the first monolithic CMOS GMR biosensing system-on-chip integrating a 32-pixel array, localized on-chip magnetic excitation, a lock-in analog front-end, an incremental ΔΣ ADC, and full digital control. The chopper-stabilized front-end (<10 nV/√Hz) and incremental ΔΣ converter achieve 120 nT rms input-referred noise, demonstrating a compact, self-contained platform for high-sensitivity multiplexed biosensing.

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Drew Hall

University of California San Diego

Program Committee Keynote Speaker

Drew Hall received the B.S. degree in computer engineering with honors from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 2005 along with M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2008 and 2012, respectively. In the past, he has held internship positions with General Electric, Bentley Nevada Corporation, and National Semiconductor Corporation where he worked on low-power, precision analog circuit design. He worked as a research scientist at the Intel Corporation from 2011 to 2013 in the integrated biosensors laboratory. In 2012 he joined the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

His research interests include bioelectronics, biosensors, analog circuit design, medical electronics, and sensor interfaces. Dr. Hall was the recipient of the 2011 Analog Devices Outstanding Designer Award, won 1st place in the inaugural international IEEE Change the World Competition, and took 1st place in the BME-IDEA invention competition. He is also a Tau Beta Pi fellow.

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High-Performance TMR Interfaces: Techniques and Insights

Tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors convert magnetic signals into resistance changes, enabling high-resolution measurements for contactless current sensing, magnetic field monitoring, and sensor interfaces. Their combination of high sensitivity, CMOS compatibility, and low power consumption makes TMR sensors attractive for both industrial and emerging applications. However, TMR sensors suffer from limited bandwidth, temperature sensitivity, and stress-induced drift, which complicate precision readout and long-term stability. This talk reviews circuit- and system-level strategies to tackle these issues and presents two illustrative examples. The first one demonstrates bandwidth extension techniques that enable wideband, ripple-free readout. The second focuses on stability compensation methods to mitigate temperature- and stress-induced variations, highlighting practical approaches to improve both speed and reliability in TMR-based sensing systems.

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Jiawei Xu

Fudan University, Shanghai, China

Keynote Speaker

Jiawei Xu received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, in 2006 and 2016, respectively. From 2006 to 2018, he was with imec/Holst Centre, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where he led the IC design activities for non-invasive brain monitoring. In 2018, he joined Fudan University and his research group works on IC designs for wearable and implantable medical devices, precision sensor interfaces, and battery power management. Dr. Xu is TPC member for CICC, Associate Editor for TVLSI and TBioCAS.

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Powerless Contactless Rotation Counting Using GMR Nanowire Technology

We present a novel multi-turn sensor architecture based on a Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR) nanowire, enabling powerless, contactless rotation counting and precise angle measurement in a highly miniaturized form factor. The first part of the talk will explore the underlying physics of the sensor, detailing how the nanoscale wire facilitates contactless and energy-free rotation counting through the generation and propagation of magnetic domain walls. The second part will address the sensor readout methodology, introducing an innovative approach that significantly reduces the number of electrical connections required between the GMR sensor and the ASIC while enabling the readout of a large array of resistors. Together, these advancements establish the GMR nanowire multi-turn sensor as a compelling solution for next-generation applications in robotics, automotive systems, and industrial automation.

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Jochen Schmitt

Senior Principal Engineer & Research Scientist, Magnetic Sensing Products, Analog Devices

Keynote Speaker

Graduated in Electronic Engineering (Dipl. Ing.) in 2000 at FH Giessen-Friedberg (the college is now called TH Mittelhessen)
Worked at Sensitec GmbH 2000 – 2015 in different roles:
2000-2008 engineer in R&D
2008-2015 manager system development
Since 2015: Analog Devices
40+ US granted patents

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Hybrid Magnetic Field Sensors

For quite some time, the combination of on-chip sense coils and Hall-effect sensors has been explored in academic research, showing promising potential by breaking the traditional noise–speed tradeoff. For actual product designs the combination brings some extra challenges, of which some will be highlighted in this keynote.

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Gert van de Horn

SystematIC design, Netherlands

Keynote Speaker

Gert van der Horn received his MSc degree in Engineering at the Electronic Instrumentation group of the TU Delft, and a PhD degree for integration of calibration circuits with smart sensors and several international publications on that topic. He developed into a versatile circuit designer with an application-minded interest in integrated circuit (IC) development. In 1998, he co-founded SystematIC, an analog and mixed-signal IC design house. He supported IC design projects and IC product developments for a wide range of applications: from low-power sensor readout to high-power switch-mode-power-supply applications. All involved advanced analog and mixed-signal circuit design, and his work resulted in several patents in multiple domains. He continues to support SystematIC at key customer accounts, including those for magnetic and other sensor products.

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Looking beyond CMOS to improve analog performance of precision sensor interfaces

Most of the world’s precision sensor interfaces are realized in CMOS processes, due to their wide availability, lower cost, and ability to co-integrate the front-end circuitry into a larger system. Yet, in stand-alone applications where both versatility and performance are required, bipolar processes continue to offer advantages in terms of 1/f noise, speed, distortion, input impedance and matching. This presentation will give an over-view of instrumentation amplifier architectures with a focus on bipolar-based precision sensor interfaces. Optimized devices, such as super-beta bipolar transistors and precision JFETs will also be discussed, as well as precision circuits based on bipolar transistors. Finally, some insights will be given into the challenges of producing bipolar-based amplifiers in high-volume.

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Viola Schaffer

Texas Instruments GmbH

Keynote Speaker

Viola Schäffer (member IEEE) received her M.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 1999.  She joined Texas Instruments Incorporated (formerly Burr-Brown Corporation) in 1998 and has been working as an analog IC design engineer and manager at various locations including Tucson, Arizona, as well as Erlangen and Freising in Germany.   Currently she is the chief technologist in the Linear Amplifier organization as well as development manager for the Precision Signal Conditioning products.  She was elected TI Fellow in 2023. 

Her work focuses on precision signal conditioning including instrumentation and programmable gain amplifiers, power amplifiers, industrial drivers as well as magnetic-based current sensors and precision magnetic sensors.  She has design experience in CMOS, HV-CMOS, precision bipolar, and BCD processes.  She has led multiple technology-circuit co-developments and designed key enabling IP on these new process nodes.  She has several IEEE publications and holds 20 patents related to this work with several applications pending.  She has served on the technical program committees for ISSCC, ESSCIRC and SSCS webinars and on the ISSCC European Region Leadership Team and is currently serving as the ISSCC Analog Subcommittee Chair.

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Advances towards Efficient High-Resolution Incremental ADCs

High-resolution, high-efficiency data converters are dominated by noise-shaping and oversampling architectures, which excel when continuous-time operation and averaging are allowed. However, in applications where true Nyquist-rate conversion is required, such as single-shot conversion, multiplexing, or time-interleaving, neither oversampling nor noise-shaping can be used. This is due to the very concepts that allow them to combine efficiency with performance: they introduce memory into the signal path, thereby preventing sample-to-sample operation. This talk presents approaches to get around this, i.e. to combine Nyquist rate conversion with high power efficiency through innovative architecture and circuit design with a focus on incremental delta-sigma ADCs.

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Maurits Ortmanns

Institute of Microelectronics, University of Ulm

Keynote Speaker

Maurits Ortmanns received the degree of Dr.-Ing. from the University of Freiburg, Germany, in 2004. From 2004 to 2005, he worked at Sci-Worx GmbH, Hannover, Germany, in the area of mixed-signal circuits for biomedical implants. In 2006, he joined the University of Freiburg as an assistant professor. Since 2008, he is a full professor at the University of Ulm, Germany, where he is the director of the Institute of Microelectronics. He is the author of the textbook Continuous-Time Sigma-Delta A/D Conversion, Springer 2006, and the textbook Incremental Delta-Sigma ADCs, Springer-Nature 2025, the co-author of several other book chapters, and over 350 IEEE journal articles and conference papers. He holds many patents. He has served as a program committee member of ISSCC, ESSCIRC, DATE, and ECCTD, as ISSCC EU regional chair, and ISSCC analog subcommittee chair. He has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE TCAS and IEEE JSSC, and as a Distinguished Lecturer for SSCS. He was the TPC chair of ESSERC 2025. His research interests include mixed-signal integrated circuit design with special emphasis on data converters and biomedical applications.

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Capacitively-Biased BJT Based Temperature Sensors in CMOS Process

Most CMOS temperature sensors are based on BJTs, which can be used to generate base-emitter voltages with well-defined temperature dependencies. However, due to headroom constraints, such sensors typically cannot operate from sub-1V supplies, limiting their use in advanced process nodes. To address these shortcomings, the capacitively biased diode (CBD) technique was recently proposed, in which a pre-charged capacitor is discharged via a diode-connected BJT. This requires very little headroom (∼150mV) and simultaneously samples the BJTs’ base-emitter voltage. The latter can then be applied to a ∆Σ ADC to generate a digital representation of temperature. In this talk, I will present the results of recent research on CBD-based temperature sensors. Prototypes in process nodes ranging from 180nm to 22nm will be presented.

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Zhong Tang

Hangzhou Institute of Technology, Xidian University

Keynote Speaker

Zhong Tang received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2015 and 2020, respectively. From 2020 to 2023, he was a Postdoc Researcher with Electronic Instrumentation Lab, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands. He joint Vango Technologies Inc., Hangzhou, China as an Analog IC Designer from 2023 to 2025. He is currently a researcher with Hangzhou Institute of Technology, Xidian University, Hangzhou, China.

His research interests include precision analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. This has led to over 50 technical articles, including 16 from the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) and the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (JSSC). Dr. Tang was a recipient of the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award of the Chinese Institute of Electronics in 2022.

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