Regular Bulk CMOS Hall Effect Sensors Employment in Solid-State Power and Energy Meters

This paper is intended to present an advanced technique to be used in solid-state power and energy meters, more specifically through the employment of the Hall effect sensors. From a qualitative point of view, an investigation into the sensing device is performed and geometrical consideration of the Hall cells onto the performance is analyzed. Different Hall cells (basic, L, XL, borderless and optimum) have been fabricated in a regular bulk CMOS technology and their main parameters were extracted. To this purpose, experimental results for the offset and sensitivity of different Hall cells are obtained. The dissipated power as well as the power-related sensitivity is calculated, for the five Hall cells in discussion.