An innovative method to perform capacitance-to-digital conversion without requiring sensor biasing circuitry is proposed. This letter is intended for the readout of MEMS capacitive microphones used in human-to-machine interface applications, where the main constraints are low power consumption and small chip area. The time-encoded sigma-delta ADC described here employs a switched-capacitor-based feedback to linearize the voltage-controlled oscillator and to couple the capacitive sensor to the readout. A prototype was fabricated to test the concept with a CMOS 130-nm process.