Data Acquisition and Signal Processing for Smart Sensors

INTRODUCTION

Rapid advances in IC technologies have brought new challenges to the physical design of integrated sensors and micro-electrical-mechanical systems (MEMS). Microsystem technology (MST) offers new ways of combining sensing, signal processing and actuation on a microscopic scale and allows both traditional and new sensors to be realized for a wide range of applications and operational environments. The term ‘MEMS’ is used in different ways: for some, it is equivalent to ‘MST’, for others, it comprises only surface-micromechanical products. MEMS in the latter sense are seen as an extension to IC technology: ‘an IC chip that provides sensing and/or actuation functions in addition to the electronic ones’ [1]. The latter definition is used in this book.

The definition of a smart sensor is based on [2] and can be formulated as: ‘a smart sensor is one chip, without external components, including the sensing, interfacing, signal processing and intelligence (self-testing, self-identification or self-adaptation) functions’.

The main task of designing measuring instruments, sensors and transducers has always been to reach high metrology performances. At different stages of measurement technology development, this task was solved in different ways. There were technological methods, consisting of technology perfection, as well as structural and structural-algorithmic methods. Historically, technological methods have received prevalence in the USA, Japan and Western Europe. The structural ...