10/8/2020

SENZORI ÎN
CONTROLUL
MEDIULUI
Dr. Victor Bocoș-Bințințan

2. Caracteristicile
esențiale ale senzorilor
Partea 1: Sensibilitatea, funcția
de transfer, domeniul dinamic,
acuratețea, histerezisul,
zgomotul, saturarea.

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Definiții
Sensor Performance Characteristics:
 Transfer Function & Calibration
 Sensitivity
 Dynamic Range (or Span)
 Accuracy or Uncertainty
 Hysteresis
 Nonlinearity (often called Linearity)
 Noise
 Resolution
 Bandwidth
 Saturation

Transfer Function
 The transfer function shows the functional
relationship between physical input signal
and electrical output signal.
 Usually, this relationship is represented as
a graph showing the relationship between
the input and output signal, and the
details of this relationship may constitute
a complete description of the sensor
characteristics.
 For expensive sensors that are individually
calibrated, this might take the form of the
certified calibration curve.

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Transfer Function
 An ideal or theoretical output–stimulus
relationship exists for every sensor.
 If the sensor is ideally designed and fabricated
with ideal materials by ideal workers using
ideal tools, the output of such a sensor would
always represent the true value of the
stimulus.
 The ideal function may be expressed in the
form of a table of values, a graph, or a
mathematical equation. An ideal (theoretical)
output–stimulus relationship is characterized
by the so-called transfer function.

Transfer Function
Transfer function displays the dependence
between the electrical signal S produced
by the sensor and the stimulus s :

S =f (s).
S is one of the characteristics of the output
electric signal used by the data acquisition
devices as the sensor’s output. It may be
amplitude, frequency, or phase, depending
on the sensor properties.

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Transfer Function

 That function may be a simple linear dependence

or a nonlinear dependence (e.g., logarithmic,
exponential, or power function).
 In many cases, the relationship is unidimensional
(i.e., the output versus one input stimulus). A
unidimensional linear relationship for transfer
function is represented by the equation:

S =a + b·s
, where a is the intercept (i.e., the output signal
at zero input signal) and b is the slope, which is
sometimes called sensitivity.

Transfer Function

 Logarithmic transfer function:

S = a +b·ln s
 Exponential transfer function:

S = a·eks
 Power transfer function:

S =a0 +a1·sk
, where k is a constant number.

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Transfer Function

A sensor may have such a transfer

function that none of the above
approximations fits sufficiently well.
In that case, a higher-order
polynomial approximation is often
employed.
NOTE: For a nonlinear transfer
function, the sensitivity b is not a
fixed number as for the linear
relationship; instead, b is varying.

Transfer Function & Calibration

Question: How do we find

the transfer function for a
sensor?

Answer: The individual

transfer function needs to be
found during/through the
process of calibration.

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Transfer Function & Calibration

Calibration means the determination of
specific variables that describe the overall
transfer function.
Overall means of the entire circuit,
including the sensor, the interface circuit,
and the A/D converter.
The mathematical model of the transfer
function should be known before
calibration. If the model is linear, then the
calibration should determine variables a
and b; if it is exponential, then variables a
and k should be determined; and so on.

Sensitivity
 The sensitivity is defined in terms of the
relationship between input PHYSICAL signal and
output ELECTRICAL signal.
 It is generally the ratio between a small change in
electrical signal to a small change in physical
signal.
 As such, it may be expressed as the derivative of
the transfer function with respect to physical
signal.
 Typical units are volts/kelvin, millivolts/kilopascal,
etc.
 EXAMPLE: A thermometer would have “high
sensitivity” if a small temperature change resulted
in a large voltage change.

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Dynamic Range (or Span)

 The dynamic range or span is the range of

input physical signals that may be converted
to electrical signals by the sensor.
 IMPORTANT! Signals outside of this range are
expected to cause unacceptably large
inaccuracy!
 This dynamic range (span) is usually specified
by the sensor supplier as the range over which
other performance characteristics described in
the data sheets are expected to apply.
 Typical units are kelvin, pascal, Newtons, etc.

Accuracy (or Uncertainty)

Avery important characteristic of a
sensor is accuracy, which really
means inaccuracy.
Inaccuracy is measured as a highest
deviation of a value represented by
the sensor from the ideal or true
value at its input.
The true value is attributed to the
object of measurement and accepted
as having a specified uncertainty.

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Accuracy (or Uncertainty)

 Uncertainty is generally defined as the largest
expected error between actual and ideal output
signals.
 Sometimes this is quoted as a fraction of the full-
scale output or a fraction of the reading.
 For example, a thermometer might be guaranteed
accurate to within 5% of FSO (Full Scale Output).
Typical units are kelvin.
 “Accuracy” is generally considered by metrologists
to be a qualitative term, while “uncertainty” is
quantitative.
 For example one sensor might have better
accuracy than another if its uncertainty is 1%
compared to the other with an uncertainty of 3%.

Hysteresis
Some sensors do not return to the same
output value when the input stimulus is
cycled up or down.

The width of the expected error in terms of

the measured quantity is defined as the
hysteresis.

EXAMPLE: For a thermometer, typical units

are kelvin, or percent of FSO.

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Hysteresis
 A hysteresis error is a deviation of the sensor’s
output at a specified point of the input signal
when it is approached from the opposite
directions.
 For example, a displacement sensor when the
object moves from left to right at a certain
point produces a voltage which differs by 20
mV from that when the object moves from
right to left. If the sensitivity of the sensor is
10 mV/mm, the hysteresis error in terms of
displacement units is 2 mm. Typical causes for
hysteresis, for this specific sensor, are friction
and structural changes in the materials.

Hysteresis

Transfer
function with
hysteresis:

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Nonlinearity (often called Linearity)

 Nonlinearity = The maximum deviation from a
linear transfer function over the specified dynamic
range.
 There are several ways to measure this error. The
most common compares the actual transfer
function with the “best straight line,” which lies
midway between the two parallel lines that
encompass the entire transfer function over the
specified dynamic range of the device.
 This choice of comparison method is popular
because it makes most sensors look the best.
Other reference lines may be used, so the user
should be careful to compare using the same
reference.

Noise
 All sensors produce some output noise in
addition to the output signal.
 In some cases, the noise of the sensor is less
than the noise of the next element in the
electronics, or less than the fluctuations in the
physical signal, in which case it is not
important.
 Many other cases exist in which the noise of
the sensor limits the performance of the
system based on the sensor.
 Noise is generally distributed across the
frequency spectrum.

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Noise
 Many common noise sources produce a white
noise distribution, which is to say that the
spectral noise density is the same at all
frequencies. Johnson noise in a resistor is a
good example of such a noise distribution.
 For white noise, the spectral noise density is
characterized in units of volts/Root (Hz).
 A distribution of this nature adds noise to a
measurement with amplitude proportional to the
square root of the measurement bandwidth.
Since there is an inverse relationship between
the bandwidth and measurement time, it can be
said that the noise decreases with the square
root of the measurement time.

Resolution
The resolution of a sensor is defined as
the minimum detectable signal
fluctuation.
Since fluctuations are temporal
phenomena, there is some relationship
between the timescale for the fluctuation
and the minimum detectable amplitude.
Therefore, the definition of resolution
must include some information about the
nature of the measurement being carried
out.

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Resolution
 Many sensors are limited by noise with a white
spectral distribution. In these cases, the
resolution may be specified in units of physical
signal/root (Hz). Then, the actual resolution for
a particular measurement may be obtained by
multiplying this quantity by the square root of
the measurement bandwidth.
 Sensor data sheets generally quote resolution in
units of signal/root (Hz) or they give a minimum
detectable signal for a specific measurement.
 If the shape of the noise distribution is also
specified, it is possible to generalize these
results to any measurement.

Bandwidth
All sensors have finite response times to an
instantaneous change in physical signal.
In addition, many sensors have decay
times, which would represent the time
after a step change in physical signal for
the sensor output to decay to its original
value.
The reciprocal of these times correspond to
the upper and lower cutoff frequencies,
respectively.
The bandwidth of a sensor is the frequency
range between these two frequencies.

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Saturation

Every sensor has its operating limits.

Even if it is considered linear, at some
levels of the input stimuli, its output
signal no longer will be responsive.
This means that any further increase
in stimulus does not produce a
desirable output of the sensor. It is
said that the sensor exhibits a span-
end nonlinearity or saturation.

Saturation

saturation
:
Transfer
function
with
saturation:

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Literatura (surse bibliografice utilizate)

Jacob Fraden, "HANDBOOK OF

MODERN SENSORS - Physics,
Designs, and Applications", 3rd
Edition, 2004, Springer, 608 pp.

Jon S. Wilson (Editor-in-Chief),

"Sensor Technology Handbook",
2005, Elsevier, 705 pp.

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