14906 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 21, NO.

13, JULY 1, 2021

Facile and Low Cost Temperature Compensated

Humidity Sensor and Signal
Conditioning System
Mazhar Javed, Memoon Sajid , Hafiz M. Zeeshan Yousaf, Gul Hassan, and Hasan Mahmood

Abstract —Most relative humidity sensors are resistive or

capacitive sensors. It’s a fact that the resistance and capac-
itance of a vast majority of such sensors also depend on
the surrounding temperature and a change of temperature
can cause significant errors in the final reading of relative
humidity. This fact of temperature dependence is scarcely
investigated in development of humidity sensors. In this work,
a very simple temperature compensation method has been
developed that automatically eliminates the effect of change
in temperature from the final output without requiring sep-
arate measurement of temperature or any data processing.
Amorphous polyethylene oxide (PEO) was used as the active
material for humidity sensor owing to its high sensitivity and
almost linear response. Interdigitated type sensor electrodes (IDE) were fabricated using reverse offset printing on glass
substrate and the active layer was deposited through spin coating. An identical twin sensor was fabricated with the same
parameters and was additionally encapsulated form the open environment. The dummy sensor was used as opposing
pair with the active sensor in a bridge configuration to achieve temperature compensation. The bridge sensitivity was
recorded to be ∼2.9 mV/%RH that was further improved to 100 mV/%RH using a differential instrumentation amplifier
based signal conditioning circuit. The sensor system was deployed in a real-life relative humidity measurement with
changing temperature that returned a remarkable accuracy of 98.76%. The error due to temperature dependence reduced
from 22.4% to just 1.24%. The transient response time of the sensor was found to be ∼2.4 s.
Index Terms — Temperature compensation, relative humidity, signal conditioning system, high sensitivity.

I. I NTRODUCTION that can be present in air at that temperature resulting in

P ERCENTAGE relative humidity can be defined as the
percentage of amount of water vapors present in air at a
certain temperature, of the maximum amount of water vapors
Manuscript received March 10, 2021; accepted April 13, 2021. Date
of publication April 19, 2021; date of current version June 30, 2021. The
associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it
for publication was Prof. Yu-Te Liao. (Mazhar Javed and Memoon Sajid
contributed equally to this work.) (Corresponding author: Memoon Sajid.)
Mazhar Javed is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Ghu-
lam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology,
Topi 23640, Pakistan, and also with the Department of Electronics,
Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad, Islamabad 15320, Pakistan.
Memoon Sajid is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Ghulam
Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi
23640, Pakistan (e-mail: memoonsajid@gmail.com).
Hafiz M. Zeeshan Yousaf is with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering,
Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology,
Topi 23640, Pakistan, and also with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, COMSATS University Islamabad at Sahiwal,
Sahiwal 57000, Pakistan.
Gul Hassan is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Interna-
tional Islamic University, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan.
Hasan Mahmood is with the Department of Electronics, Quaid-i-Azam
University Islamabad, Islamabad 15320, Pakistan.
This article has supplementary downloadable material available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2021.3073957, provided by the authors.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2021.3073957
1558-1748 © 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
saturation. It is important to monitor and control the relative
humidity of manufacturing environments in food, medicine,
chemical, and electronics industries. Information of relative
humidity of certain geological areas is crucial in prediction of
floods/storms, optimizing the agricultural conditions for differ-
ent crops, weather telemetry, and so on [1]–[4]. For accurate
monitoring and control of humidity, it is first required to be
precisely measured and quantified. Different types of humidity
sensors are available in the market and have been devel-
oped in research based on their sensing mechanism, range,
structure, category of active materials, and so on [5]–[8].
The aim behind development of so many different types is
to improve the performance parameters of the sensors that
include sensitivity, specificity, range, linearity, response and
recovery time, long term stability, hysteresis, etc. [9]–[11]. It is
impossible to optimize and improve all the parameters together
in a single device as these parameters are inter-dependent
and improvement in one may result in degradation of the
other. Most of the current research works thus focus on
the development of application specific devices where only
few parameters are of key importance while the rest can be
compromised [2], [12]–[14].

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JAVED et al.: FACILE AND LOW COST TEMPERATURE COMPENSATED HUMIDITY SENSOR
All categories of humidity sensors have an active mate-
rial that responds to the changing humidity resulting in
a change in its resistance, capacitance, optical properties,
weight, resonant frequency, mobility, etc. Different types
of materials are employed for this purpose including poly-
mers, metal oxides, 2D materials, transition metals, bio-
materials, crystals, ceramics, carbon and its derivatives,
etc [3], [5], [15]–[20].
Ideally, physical parameters of the humidity sensors should
not be affected by the change in any other physical quantity,
especially temperature as it cannot be physically isolated by
encapsulation. But, in reality, the physical properties of such
materials are in fact very much dependent on change in
temperature in addition to the change in humidity. This fact
is often ignored in most of the research works carried out
on the development of humidity sensors. This dependence on
temperature is considered as the non-specificity for humidity
sensors and can result in enormous errors in the calculation of
relative humidity in certain cases [21] and can be catastrophic
in food, health, and pharmaceutical industries. There has
been relatively lower focus towards eliminating the effect of
temperature on the physical properties of relative humidity
sensors and majority of the methods investigated so far involve
very complex and high cost solutions that are not practically
feasible for low cost humidity sensors. For instance, most
attempts by researchers have been made using artificial neural
networks (ANN) for temperature compensation in humidity
sensors [22]–[25] but the issue is requirement of high end
computers to implement those algorithms. Another approach
of normalization of curves and calculating the change in
constants of curve fitting equations at different temperatures
has also been investigated [26], [27]. This is a relatively better
approach in terms of realization but requires accurate measure-
ment of temperature as well as a microprocessor to implement
and solve the complex mathematical equations. Then, few of
them involve micro-machining of complex MEMS structures
that are not ideal for long term stability and are also quite
difficult and expensive to fabricate [28].
A facile, integrated, and low cost approach is much
needed to seamlessly compensate the effect of temperature
in relative humidity sensors. This research work focuses
exactly on that by developing a complete integrated solu-
tion for temperature compensation in relative humidity sen-
sors. The work covers material selection, device fabrication,
optimization and enhancement of performance parameters,
and design and implementation of temperature compensa-
tion signal conditioning circuit. A resistive humidity sen-
sor based on PEO in its amorphous form was developed.
A bridge based signal conditioning circuit was used for tem-
perature compensation with an identical encapsulated sensor
as the dummy cell. Sensitivity was improved by designing
an instrumentation amplifier based circuit to amplify the
differential output of the bridge. This approach is widely
used for temperature compensation in strain and pressure
sensor systems and have been proven to exhibit excellent
results [29]. The results achieved in this work are also remark-
able given the simplistic and low cost design and fabrication
approach.
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14907
II. E XPERIMENTAL
A. Materials and Methods
Polyethylene oxide (PEO) with molecular weight (MW) of
200,000 purchased from Sigma Aldrich was used to fabricate
the active layer of humidity sensor. The polymer powder was
dissolved in DI water by 5 wt%/vol to prepare a solution. The
solution was magnetically stirred at 40◦C overnight to achieve
homogeneity. Silver nanoparticles (Ag-NP) ink by PARU was
used to fabricate the electrodes using reverse offset printing
as described in our previous works [1]–[3], [18], [30], [31].
Further details on printing and dimensions of electrodes are
provided in supplementary information section-I. The samples
were then treated again with UV and the active layer was
deposited in the form of thin film using spin coating at
1500 rpm. The fabricated sensors were cured at 100◦C for
90 minutes to evaporate all residue of the solvent. Detailed
schematic of fabrication process is presented in supplementary
information Figure-1.
Multiple identical sensing devices were fabricated through
the same process by selecting the same fabrication parameters.
One of the sensors was then encapsulated using a Cellophane
tape (off-the-shelf ∼80 μm) with a plastic spacer (∼500
μm in height) to protect the active humidity sensing area
from any damage through physical contact of the tape. The
encapsulation isolated the active area of the sensor from the
physical environment, thus blocking any water molecules to
pass through; but at the same time, allowing the heat to
reach the active layer via conduction from the back side
and convection from the front side. Images of the fabricated
devices and the height profile of electrodes are presented in
supplementary information Figure-2.
B. Sensor Characterizations
The sensors were characterized for their morphological,
chemical, and electrical properties for in-depth investigation
of their response, working principle, and performance para-
meters. The surface morphology of the active thin film was
investigated using Carl Zeiss Supra 55VP operating at 20 kV
field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and the
chemical characteristics of the sensing material were investi-
gated using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy
(BruklerIFS666/S-Germany).
The electrical response of sensors was explored in detail
using in-house developed controlled environmental chamber
with real-time data logging and plotting. The setup includes
a dry Nitrogen cylinder with flow control valves as the dehu-
midifier, a variable controlled desktop humidifier, an HTU-
21D high accuracy MEMS based integrated temperature and
relative humidity sensor as the reference, Applent AT-825 dig-
ital LCR with USB interface, GwInstek AFG-2125 arbitrary
function generator, GwInstek GDM-8342 dual measurement
bench-top multi-meter with USB interface, and an in-house
developed central control and interface module with LCD
display and central data-logging to the computer via USB
interface. Detailed schematic of the characterization setup is
presented in Fig. 1.
14908 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 21, NO. 13, JULY 1, 2021

Fig. 1. Detailed schematic design of controlled environmental setup for electrical characterizations.

Fig. 2. Physical and chemical characteristics of sensing material with (a) showing surface SEM and (b) showing the FTIR of PEO thin film.

To investigate the effect of temperature, the chamber was
heated using an in-built convection heating filament. Transient
response of the sensor was recorded by quickly switching
between one stream of air saturated with water vapor and one
stream of dry Nitrogen. Further details on the characterization
setup can be found in our previous works [2], [18].
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
A. Morphological and Chemical Characterizations
SEM results presented in III-B(a) show micro-level cracks
formed in the surface due to melting of the material during
curing at high temperature (PEO melting point 74◦C) and then
re-solidification when the temperature was returned to normal.
The phase of PEO was also changed from semi-crystalline to
amorphous during curing as the glass transition temperature of
PEO is 69◦ C [32]. This effect is visible from the micro-pores
created in the gel like thin film of the amorphous PEO due to
trapped air.
The micro-pores result in substantially improving overall
porosity of the active layer, thus increasing the surface area
to volume ratio that is ideal for humidity and gas sensors
as it allows maximum sites for the adsorption of water and
gas molecules [30]. The amorphous behavior of PEO is also
clearly visible from the FTIR results presented in III-B(b). The
three characteristic triplet absorption bands of C-O-C at 1060,
1105, and 1144 cm−1 representing crystallinity of the material
are missing from the results [32]. The remaining bands,
however, confirm the material to be PEO with the absorption
bands in the region with wavenumber lower than 1000 cm−1
representing CH2 rocking, the band at 1290 cm−1 represent-
ing CH2 twisting mode, and the sharp peak at 2871 cm−1
corresponding to C-H stretching mode. The wide absorption
in the band around 3400 cm−1 represents the presence of

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JAVED et al.: FACILE AND LOW COST TEMPERATURE COMPENSATED HUMIDITY SENSOR
Fig. 3. Impedance response of the devices at various temperatures showing (a) output curve of open sensor and (b) output curve of encapsulated
sensor.
OH (hydroxyl) group due to physical adsorption while the
band near 1643 cm−1 represents hydrogen bonded hydroxyl
ions with the polymer [32]. The attachment of hydroxyl ions
with the polymer through hydrogen bonding results in higher
sensitivity of the material towards lower humidity levels.
It facilitates the flow of electronic and ionic current through the
random paths in amorphous polymer matrix, thus decreasing
the resistance when the humidity levels increase [32].
B. Electrical Response and Behavior
Two identical devices were fabricated and one of them was
encapsulated to isolate it from the effect of humidity while the
other one was left open. Impedance response of both devices
was investigated towards increasing relative humidity and the
results are presented in Fig. 3(a). Initially, the temperature was
kept constant at room temperature and the relative humidity
was changed from 0% RH to 80% RH. Results show that the
impedance of non-encapsulated device (black) decreases with
increasing temperature with a slope of ∼15 k/%RH while
the impedance of encapsulated device (green) is not affected
by the changing relative humidity and remains constant for a
fixed temperature. This confirms that the encapsulated sensor
was successfully isolated from the humid environment. The
dependence of device impedance (Z) on temperature (T)
was investigated by taking the Z vs RH curves at various
temperatures for the open sensor, while Z vs T curves for
the encapsulated sensor. The results presented in Fig. 3(a)
show that the impedance of open sensor is highly dependent
on the surrounding temperature. The impedance decreases
with increasing temperature shifting the whole curves (red
& blue) of Z vs RH to a different level. This is due to
the change in conductivity of amorphous PEO with chang-
ing temperature [32]. Similarly, the Z vs T plot (black) of
encapsulated sensor presented in Fig. 3(b) shows that the
impedance decreases with increasing temperature with a slope
of about 29.5 k/◦ C and is independent of the change in
relative humidity. This dependence of device impedance on
temperature will result in a huge error in the reading of relative
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14909
humidity if the temperature changes by even 1◦ C (1◦ C change
in temperature will result in an error of 2% RH). In terms
of real life scenario, the environmental temperature of most
areas around the globe roughly change on average by around
10◦C in a 24 hours duration. This means an error of 20% in
relative humidity readings over the course of a day which is
unacceptable. The magnitude of change in sensor resistance
due to change in temperature will be different for different
materials but some effect is there nevertheless for the majority
of devices.
Specificity of a sensor is its ability to respond to only
the targeted parameter and reject the effect of anything else
(noise). This means that a humidity sensor responding to
temperature variations is a non-specific sensor that is highly
undesirable. To address the issue of temperature dependence
and improve the specificity of humidity sensors, an extremely
affective and simple approach has been developed in this work.
The sensors were connected in a bridge configuration with the
open sensor connected in one potential divider branch of the
bridge, while the identical but encapsulated sensor connected
in the opposing potential divider branch of the same bridge.
The bridge was excited with an AC waveform of 1 kHz having
an RMS value of 1 V. AC excitation source was used instead of
DC to prevent possible polarization of hydroxyl ions and water
molecules under a fixed applied electric field. Also, a low volt-
age excitation source was used to avoid damage to the active
layer and keep the power consumption low at the same time.
As per the results presented in Fig. 3, it is expected that the
output voltage of the branch with open sensor would change
for both changing temperature and relative humidity but the
output voltage of the encapsulated branch will respond only
to changes in temperature. Results of the bridge configuration
with outputs of individual divider branches are presented in
Fig. 4. As theorized, Fig. 4(a) shows that voltage of open
sensor branch (red) is dependent on both the temperature and
relative humidity while the voltage of encapsulated sensor
branch (blue) is only dependent on changes in temperature.
Results at constant temperature presented in Fig. 4(b) show
that the voltage of encapsulated sensor branch (blue) remains
14910 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 21, NO. 13, JULY 1, 2021

Fig. 4. Output response of open and encapsulated devices connected in a bridge configuration showing (a) temperature dependence of open
and encapsulated sensors, (b) output of both branches and the overall bridge versus humidity, (c) temperature compensation using bridge, and
(d) comparison of normalized compensated and uncompensated outputs with the standard.

constant for changing humidity while the voltage of open
sensor branch (red) decreases almost linearly with increasing
humidity. Relatively lower sensitivity of the sensor towards
lower humidity levels was resulting in a non-linear Z vs RH
curve as presented in Fig. 3. But, as potential divider itself has
non-linear response for linear changes in resistance, the non-
linearity in resistance was cancelled out by the opposing
non-linearity of divider; thus, resulting in a fairly linear voltage
output. Though, it would not be a universal case and is
only true for this particular device. Differential output of the
bridge (green) in Fig. 4(b) will be considered as the standard
output of humidity sensor system at a constant temperature
from this point onwards. Compensation performance of the
developed signal conditioning system was then evaluated for
varying temperatures while recording its response towards
change in humidity. Fig. 4(c) presents multiple curves includ-
ing open sensor branch output (red), encapsulated sensor
branch output (blue), differential compensated output (green),
and change in temperature (black) for better visualization.
It can be observed from the results that the open sensor branch
output (red) no longer remains linear when the surrounding
temperature changes. But, the encapsulated sensor branch out-
put (blue) no longer remains constant as well. The differential
compensated output (green) however remains fairly linear even
with continuously varying surrounding temperature. This is
due to an equal effect of temperature on the opposing branches
of bridge; thus automatically cancelling each other out and
resulting in temperature compensation.
The compensation effect can be better visualized from
Fig. 4(d) where the three curves are normalized and plot-
ted together. The uncompensated curve (blue) shows huge
deviation from the standard (black) due to slight change in
temperature while the compensated curve (red) remains fairly
close to the standard curve. Relative percentage error of the
uncompensated curve (blue) with the standard curve (black)
was calculated to be 20.8% (absolute error of 5.61) for ∼6.3◦ C
variation in temperature. The percentage error was reduced
to just 5.4% (absolute error of 1.97) for the compensated
curve (red) that shows a huge improvement. It is worth noting
here that the reference sensor used in this work (HTU-21D)
also had a rated maximum error of up to 3% [33] while
linear approximation of the standard curve (green) of Fig. 4(c)
also resulted in a standard error of 1.1%. This means that if
the linear approximations are not made and the actual curves
are considered, the error will be further reduced. Also, this
configuration of bridge based compensation will work for
sensors with any form of output, whether linear or non-linear,
resistive or capacitive, and increasing or decreasing. This
makes out proposed solution to be close to a universal solution
for temperature compensation in humidity sensor chips.
To improve the sensitivity of the system, the differential
output of bridge was amplified using an instrumentation

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JAVED et al.: FACILE AND LOW COST TEMPERATURE COMPENSATED HUMIDITY SENSOR 14911

Fig. 5. Detailed signal conditioning circuit design for the temperature compensated humidity measurement system.

Fig. 6. Real-life parameters of the developed humidity sensing system showing (a) response and recovery time curve, (b) long term stability and
reproducibility, and (c) real-time measurement of relative humidity in open environment.

amplifier based signal conditioning circuit that has an added
advantage of automatically rejecting any common mode noise
from the output signal. The detailed signal conditioning circuit
diagram/schematic is presented in Fig. 5. The circuit was
designed based on actual parameters of sensor resistance,
signal amplitude, and desired output. Maximum value for
the intrinsic impedance of both sensors was recorded to be
∼1.25 M at 0% RH. As the sensors were used in potential
divider based bridge configuration, the value of fixed resistors
was selected to be in the same order of magnitude that is
3 M. Slightly higher value of fixed resistors was selected to
compensate for the non-linear effects of a bridge circuit and
keep the voltage output approximately linear in a short defined
range. This will no doubt affect the maximum sensitivity of
differential bridge output but will let us operate the system in a
linear range that is of higher importance in this kind of signal
conditioning circuits. Sensitivity of the overall system was
later improved by signal amplification as described above. The

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14912
TABLE I
D ETAILED C OMPARISON OF THE P ERFORMANCE PARAMETERS OF VARIOUS H UMIDITY S ENSING D EVICES
gains and reference voltage were selected to directly obtain a
voltage reading roughly corresponding to the actual % relative
humidity with 0.1 V representing 1% RH (0.0 V for 00% RH
and 8.0 V for 80% RH). AD620 instrumentation amplifier
was used for signal amplification while LM741 was used for
offset correction at 0% RH. Both are readily available and cost
a fraction of a dollar. Furthermore, the effect of mismatch in
resistance of both sensors was investigated to verify the system
robustness in various conditions. The effect was investigated
through simulations by changing the value of encapsulated
sensor. It was observed that the overall system equation
changes but the compensation effect remains intact because
as presented in Fig. 4(a), the voltage output of encapsulated
sensor changes linearly with temperature.
This means that the change in voltage (V) for a change
in temperature (T) will remain same regardless of the initial
value of encapsulated sensor resistance. So, a mismatch in
the sensor pair resistances is not a cause of concern here.
The only affect will be observed on the intercept of the linear
relationship that can be easily tuned by changing the offset
voltage at the last stage. Further details and simulation results
are presented in supplementary information section-II.
As the final evaluation measurement, transient response,
long term stability & repeatability, and real-life output results
were recorded for the developed sensor solution. Results of
the transient response presented in Fig. 6(a) show that the
response time (to achieve 90% of maximum output starting
from 10%) of the sensors was ∼1.88 s while the recovery time
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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 21, NO. 13, JULY 1, 2021
(recover to 10% of maximum output starting from 90%) was
recorded to be ∼2.88 s. Long term stability and reproducibility
of the sensors was investigated by recording the full range
output response curve with an interval of 100 days between
two readings. During that time, to ensure real-life applicability,
the devices were stored in nominal open environment without
any special precautions other than avoiding physical damage
or contamination of the active layer. The results presented
in Fig. 6(b) indicate the maximum absolute error of around
5.8% between the two curves showing outstanding stability of
the devices making the developed system an ideal candidate
for weather monitoring. The real-life weather monitoring
capabilities of the developed system were tested by deploying
it for real-time monitoring of relative humidity in an open
environment with varying temperature and humidity. The data
was recorded for both the bridge output and the overall
system output. Temperature of the environment (red) was
varied intentionally between 31.7◦C and 43.7◦C using a room
heater installed near the setup for a measurement time of
1 hour. Temperature was changed forcefully to maximize the
induced error in the system and check its robustness and
effectiveness in compensation for more challenging condi-
tions. The results presented in Fig. 6(c) show that relative
humidity (green) of the environment changed from 47.5%
RH to 33.8% RH during the same time. The dependence of
various sensor parameters towards the changing environmen-
tal conditions show that the voltage output of encapsulated
sensor branch (light green) is only dependent on the changing
JAVED et al.: FACILE AND LOW COST TEMPERATURE COMPENSATED HUMIDITY SENSOR
temperature as expected; the voltage output of the open sensor
branch (grey) is dependent on both temperature and humidity;
while the differential output of bridge (pink) is dependent only
on humidity. Continuous output of the overall system after
temperature compensation, that is voltage represented as a
function of relative humidity (orange) is almost overlapping
the reference relative humidity (dark green). The absolute
error or difference between the two curves is just 1.24%.
For comparison, the uncompensated output of the open sen-
sor branch (grey) and the calculated uncompensated relative
humidity as a result (blue) are also plotted on the same graph.
The uncompensated humidity value exhibits an enormous error
of 22.4% when compared to the reference humidity curve
(dark green). This means that a change in temperature of just
12◦ C results in huge errors in calculation of relative humidity
that have been successfully eliminated using the proposed
approach making the developed sensor system an ideal and
complete solution for real-life humidity sensing applications.
Various performance parameters of the fabricated sensor
solution in this work were compared with the state-of-the-
art commercially available relative humidity sensors and those
reported in literature. A detailed comparison is presented in
TABLE I. Sensor with the best performance in each category
has been highlighted showing a clear dominance of the current
work over the competitors. This ascertains that the developed
solution is superior to most of the previously reported works in
the targeted categories. Also, the proposed solution is a low
cost (less than $1) and simple design that is ideal for mass
production.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this work, a very important aspect of temperature depen-
dence of relative humidity sensors has been explored and the
complete solution from the fabrication of devices to the sig-
nal conditioning circuit design for temperature compensation
has been developed. Interdigitated type electrodes fabricated
through reverse offset printing technique were used as the
transducers while the active layer of the humidity sensor
was based on a highly hydrophilic polymer, Polyethylene
oxide (PEO) in its amorphous phase. Temperature can affect
the physical properties of the device (resistance, capacitance,
permittivity, optical properties, etc.) that results in errors in
calculation of humidity. The issue has to be addressed at the
IC level to eliminate this effect either by fabricating a device
whose properties are independent of temperature, or through
designing a signal conditioning system to cancel out the effect
at the output. It is quite difficult to completely eliminate the
effect of temperature on the device properties and most of the
compensation methods involve signal processing to handle this
issue. In this work, an identical twin sensor pair was fabricated
and one of them was encapsulated using cellophane tape to
isolate it from humidity. This encapsulated sensor was used to
get an opposite and equal signal for temperature compensation.
The compensation system was based on bridge based signal
conditioning circuit with the active sensor and the compen-
sation sensor connected in opposing branches of the bridge.
The output was amplified using a differential instrumentation
amplifier to improve the sensitivity and eliminate the common
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14913
mode noise. Cost of the overall system was estimated to
be less than a dollar for mass production. The developed
sensor system was capable to measure relative humidity with
a bridge sensitivity of 2.9 mV/%RH while the final output
sensitivity of 100 mV/%RH in a wide range of 0% to 75% RH.
Temperature compensation results show that the error due to
temperature changes was successfully reduced from 22.4% to
1.24%. The system had a transient response time of ∼2.4 s and
a long term accuracy of ∼95%. The output response was linear
and can be directly read as relative humidity being represented
in terms of voltage output. The system would be valid for
non-linear devices as well. Only the voltage output will not
directly represent humidity that is not an issue and can be
tackled by solving the non-linear equation of response curve.
The same system can be further used to measure temperature
if required with an additional circuit connected only to the
compensation branch of the bridge.
C ONFLICT OF I NTEREST
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Mazhar Javed has been a Research Associate with the GIK Institute
since 2009. He is doing his research on modeling and optimization of
electronic sensing devices under the supervision of Dr. Hasan Mahmood.
Memoon Sajid received the Ph.D. degree in
micro mechatronics with a focus on device fabri-
cation and performance optimization. He is work-
ing on development of high end sensing solu-
tions, including state-of-the-art fabrication sys-
tems, performance optimization, and signal con-
ditioning circuits design. His areas of expertise
include design and fabrication of environmental
sensors and sensing systems.
Hafiz M. Zeeshan Yousaf is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with
the Semiconductor Devices Laboratory, GIK Institute, Pakistan, under
the supervision of Dr. Khasan Karimov and Dr. Memoon Sajid. His
research interest includes sensors fabrication through printed electronics
techniques.
Gul Hassan is serving as an Assistant Professor with the Center
of Advanced Electronics and Photovoltaic Engineering, International
Islamic University, Islamabad. His areas of interest includes MEMS
devices, their fabrication, characterization, and performance optimiza-
tion.
Hasan Mahmood received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in
USA, in 2007. His research interests include communication systems,
Ad hoc networks, channel coding, and computer architecture.