I've been studying about capacitive accelerometers, and basically how they work is by detecting the change in capacitance or as a result of change in the distance between the conductive plates, small capacitive changes can be measured. And they further imply that by measuring the voltage, we can get the motion information accordingly.
My question is, how is this voltage generated? How does the change in capacitance generate a voltage?
If the variable capacitor is placed in series with a fixed capacitor of known capacitance and a known voltage is put across the two capacitors then a capacitive voltage divider circuit can be used to read how the voltage drop is divided between the two capacitors. This allows the capacitance of the variable capacitor to be determined.
The whole circuit probably includes a voltage regulator to provide a stable reference voltage, and some type of amplification circuit to amplify small changes in voltage.
