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FROM THE EDITOR: THE SENSOR IS INCREASINGLY BECOMING A MORE CONVENIENT SUB-SYSTEM FOR THE OEM.

Article Excerpt
As sensors increasingly become vital components in an expanding array of OEM products and systems, burgeoning opportunities are opening up for sensors that provide sub-system functionality in addition to sensing a certain parameter. To greatly facilitate ease of integration of the sensor into the user's system and to help enable such systems to be fully optimized, the sensor is increasingly being called upon to provide value-added features and capabilities, particularly intelligent signal conditioning, processing, and calibration electronics and compatibility with widely used bus communication networks, such as I2C and SPI. Moreover, lower-cost, very compact surface mountable sensors are finding opportunities for use in electronic circuits in varied high-volume applications.

In November at the Electronica trade show in Munich, Germany, HL-Planartechnik GmbH (Dortmund, Germany, ++49-231-97400)(www.hlplanar.com)-a continuously growing manufacturer of innovative sensor solutions that use thin-film and MEMS technologies, which maintains a U.S. sales office in Scottsdale, AZ (602-468-0063/800-775-2627)-formally introduced three new products designed to provide value-added sensing solutions: a thermopile array-based temperature sensing sub-system with digital communications compatibility, a tilt/inclination sensor in an SMD package, and an anisotropic magnetoresistive sensor-based sub-system capable of sensing angles of up to 360 degrees.

HL's non-contact infrared temperature sensor sub-system, the TSEM01/08L, can operate over a range of up to five meters and uses a temperature sensor consisting of a linear array of eight thermopile elements connected in series on a silicon chip along with an integrated NTC thermistor that serves as an ambient temperature reference by registering the temperature of the thermopile sensor.

A thermopile sensor element consists of a serially-connected array of thermocouples, remotely measures infrared radiation emitted from an object, and generates a voltage proportional to the object's surface temperature. An IR thermopile sensor emits its own radiation based on the sensor's temperature. Since the amount of radiation absorbed by the thermopile sensor depends on the difference in temperature between the object to be measured and the sensor, the thermopile will generate a signal proportional to the difference in temperature between the sensor and target object. It is, therefore, necessary to record the temperature of the sensor itself as well as the...