Patent ID: 8134375

Claim:
A capacitive Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) sensor device that senses a mechanical quantity, the capacitive MEMS sensor comprising: a capacitive MEMS sensing element, having two plates arranged in parallel at a distance that varies in response to said mechanical quantity, that converts the sensed mechanical quantity into an electrical quantity; a first bias voltage unit that supplies a first bias voltage (V bias 1 ) to a first plate of said capacitive MEMS sensing element; a second bias voltage unit that supplies a second bias voltage (V bias 2 ) to the second plate of said capacitive MEMS sensing element; a signal processing unit that processes said electrical quantity into an output signal (V OUT ); a comparator unit that compares said output signal (V OUT ) to a reference voltage (V ref ) to detect an overload condition of said capacitive MEMS sensing element and outputs a comparator signal; and a control unit that controls the discharge of said capacitive MEMS sensing element based upon said comparator signal by connecting, after detection of the overload condition, said first plate to a discharge terminal during a first time interval and said second plate to the discharge terminal during a second time interval wherein the first bias voltage and the second bias voltage are separately controlled.