Design and implementation of smart pressure sensor for automotive applications

No doubt that the measurement is an important matter in the precise and accurate control of automotive subsystems to improve the performance and efficiency. The key tool to achieve high degree of precision and accuracy in control applications is sensor. In recent years, the rapid technological advances have revolutionized the automotive industry and a great variety of new sensors are introduced to the market with the purpose of accelerating the development of autonomous vehicles technology. However, the increasing legal pressures from regulatory authorities have led to strengthened requirements for robust pressure sensors in vehicles. On the other hand, the cost of such devices need to remain low due to the continual competition in the market. In this study, we have proposed a low cost piezoresistive sensing method based smart pressure sensor, which combines the signal conditioning, analog/digital signal processing and communication circuitry directly to the sense element in a single compact housing. The introduced smart pressure sensor achieves the improved reliability and greater accuracy due to its built-in temperature compensation, filtering and self-calibration capabilities. The measurement performance of our prototype design has been tested in dynamic test device, which can control the working status of a typical vehicle compressor. The experimental results validate the robustness of the proposed smart pressure sensor in terms of linearity, repeatability and data transmission.