US Patent 10582309 MEMS transducer amplifiers

This applications relates to methods and apparatus for amplifying signals from capacitive transducers, in particular MEMS transducers such as MEMS capacitive microphones. An amplifier circuit has a signal node for receiving the input signal, a transducer biasing node for outputting a transducer bias voltage for biasing the capacitive transducer, and a voltage buffer configured to generate a buffered bias voltage at a buffer node. An amplifier arrangement is configured to receive the input signal from the signal node and the buffered bias voltage. The amplifier circuit comprises a signal path for supplying the buffered bias voltage to the transducer biasing node via a first capacitance, and the amplifier arrangement comprises a feedback resistor network configured such that: a change in input signal with respect to the buffered bias voltage results in a change in the output signal with respect to the buffered bias voltage with a gain greater than one; and a change in the buffered bias voltage results in a change in the output signal with a gain equal to one.