Autorange Thermal Sigma–Delta Converter for Incident Radiation Measurement

Thermal sigma–delta modulator is a closed-loop measurement approach, where the sensing element performs part of the $\Sigma \Delta$ modulation in the thermal domain. A new architecture is proposed in this paper for measuring the thermal incident radiation using thermoresistive sensors, where the modulator input range is automatically adjusted to fit the complete thermal radiation. The proposed architecture is compared with a similar one, which uses the same transducer interface circuit but without range adjustment, and is validated experimentally with a reference pyranometer. The proposed architecture has the main advantage of presenting a signal-to-noise ratio and sensitivity that is independent of the ambient temperature range definition. Experimental results for an ambient temperature range of 45 °C show a gain of 13 dB over the similar one.

[1]  Johan H. Huijsing,et al.  Design of thermal sigma-delta modulators for smart thermal sensors , 1995, Proceedings of ISCAS'95 - International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[2]  Kofi A. A. Makinwa,et al.  Constant power operation of a two-dimensional flow sensor using thermal sigma-delta modulation techniques , 2001, IMTC 2001. Proceedings of the 18th IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference. Rediscovering Measurement in the Age of Informatics (Cat. No.01CH 37188).

[3]  Kofi A. A. Makinwa,et al.  Constant power operation of a two-dimensional flow sensor , 2002, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas..

[4]  Eric Lebrasseur,et al.  A heat balanced sigma–delta uncooled bolometer , 2014 .

[5]  Tayfun Akin,et al.  A low-cost uncooled infrared microbolometer detector in standard CMOS technology , 2003 .

[6]  Valter da Conceicao Rosa,et al.  Thermal Radiation Measurement With Thermoresistive Sigma–Delta Modulator , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

[7]  Johan H. Huijsing,et al.  Design Of Integrated Thermal Flow Sensors Using Thermal Sigma-delta Modulation , 1995, Proceedings of the International Solid-State Sensors and Actuators Conference - TRANSDUCERS '95.

[8]  M. Denoual,et al.  Capacitively coupled electrical substitution for bolometers , 2008, 2008 IEEE Sensors.

[9]  Sergio Bermejo,et al.  Low-cost thermal ??-? air flow sensor , 2002 .

[10]  R. C. S. Freire,et al.  Second-order Thermal Sigma-Delta applied to resistive bolometers on infrared detection , 2016, 2016 1st International Symposium on Instrumentation Systems, Circuits and Transducers (INSCIT).

[11]  Kofi A. A. Makinwa,et al.  A 25 mW smart CMOS wind sensor with corner heaters , 2015, IECON 2015 - 41st Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[12]  J.H. Huijsing,et al.  A 2nd order thermal sigma-delta modulator for flow sensing , 2005, Italian National Conference on Sensors.

[13]  Georgi Tsenov,et al.  Approximation Formula for Easy Calculation of Signal-to-Noise Ratio of Sigma-Delta Modulators , 2011 .

[14]  Youngcheol Chae,et al.  A 25mW CMOS sensor for wind and temperature measurement , 2011, 2011 IEEE SENSORS Proceedings.

[15]  Antoni Rogalski,et al.  History of infrared detectors , 2012 .

[16]  Raphael Mukaro,et al.  A microcontroller-based data acquisition system for solar radiation and environmental monitoring , 1999, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas..

[17]  José Manuel de la Rosa,et al.  Sigma-Delta Modulators: Tutorial Overview, Design Guide, and State-of-the-Art Survey , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[18]  Raimundo C. S. Freire,et al.  A constant temperature operation thermoresistive sigma–delta solar radiometer , 2006 .

[19]  Kofi A. A. Makinwa,et al.  Flow sensing with thermal sigma-delta modulators , 2004 .

[20]  L.S. Palma,et al.  A constant temperature operation thermo-resistive /spl Sigma/-/spl Delta/ transducer , 2004, Proceedings of the 21st IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37510).

[21]  Raimundo Carlos Silvério Freire,et al.  A feedback I2-controlled constant temperature solar radiation meter , 1998, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas..

[22]  A. Oliveira,et al.  An inherently linear transducer using thermistor practical approach , 2008, 2008 3rd International Conference on Sensing Technology.

[23]  Raimundo Carlos Silvério Freire,et al.  Applications of Thermoresistive Sensors Using the Electric Equivalence Principle , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.