Current sensing – Different

techniques

Part I
• Historically current was measured directly by
moving coil meters where the current flowing
through the coil moves a needle against the
force of a spring. The deflection of the needle is
directly proportional to the current. The
sensitivity of the meter has to be high. Typically
this current used to be 50 micro Amp.
• To measure voltage a series high value resistor
is connected from the source to the meter.
• To measure high current a shunt resistor of low
value is connected in parallel to the meter.
• Subsequently when digital systems became popular,
Analog to Digital Converters were used to measure a
voltage. The current required is very low less than a nA.
• Interface to most of the ADCs require a voltage to be
generated.
• To sense current a very low resistor called shunt is used
in the current path and the voltage across this shunt is
connected to the ADC.
• It may be noted that a shunt is in fact connected in series
with the path where we need to measure the current. It is
connected in parallel to the moving coil meter and hence
the name “shunt”
• Shunt is one of the methods to convert current into
voltage.
• There are other popular methods for measuring current
and they are
– transformer (for ac measurement)
– Hall effect sensor for both ac and dc.
– Flux gate sensing
– Rogowski coil
• This presentation deals with shunt and Current
Transformer. Other types are covered in the remaining
parts.
• This presentation also contains 2 viewgraphs on lossless
inductor current sensing method.
 Comparison of different methods of
measuring current

LEM- different
current sensing techniques
 Measurement using shunts
• To ensure minimum loss we should use as low a
resistor as possible.
• The shunt resistor should have very low
temperature coefficient so that the value of
resistor and hence the sensed voltage does not
vary due to the self heating in the resistor.
• An amplifier will amplify the sensed signal to
match the output to the ADC.
• ADCs typically have a full scale range of 1 to 5
V, while the sensed voltage across the shunt will
be typically 60 to 100 mV.
 Typical applications of a shunt
• To monitor current in a power supply, making sure it is
not damaged by the load.
• To set the current in an LED lighting system.
• To sense how much current is being applied to a battery
pack during charging to prevent overcharging or
overheating in the batteries.
• To measure the amount of current being applied to a
circuit from the battery pack, enabling estimation of the
battery life before charging is needed.
• To estimate the rotational speed of a motor, since the
speed of a motor is directly proportional to the amount of
current applied to it.
• In ac applications a transformer may thought of as the
first option.
 Important Parameters for Current
sense resistors.
• Tight Tolerance
• Typically ±1% or tighter.
• Low Temperature Coefficient
Typically 50 to 500 ppm. tti current sense
resistor

• Low Thermal EMF

• Resistance Value
– For maximizing energy conversion
efficiency, this should be kept as low
as possible.
 Four Terminal Measurement

When current measured is large, the points of measurement is very critical and
Four Terminal measurement technique is usually adopted.
Figure above illustrates the layout to be used to get an accurate and repetitive
measurement.
 Placement of the shunt
• Where the shunt is inserted is a very important decision.
• To insert it in the ground path is easy from the amplifier
point of view.
• But in many applications it may not be feasible to break
the different ground paths. Positive bus or some
intermediate point may be the place where the shunt has
to be inserted. Such a sensing is called High Side
Sensing. To make the matters worse the voltage at the
intermediate point may have large excursions of voltage.
• Since the voltage at the High Side can be anywhere from
5V to 100 V (it may even be 400V), normal op amps can
not be directly connected to the shunt.
• Most semiconductor manufacturers have
ICs for high side sensing. I have taken
examples from TI.
• INA 138, 168 and 193 series are the
popular ones. The links of these are given
below:
• http://focus.ti.com/paramsearch/docs/paramet
INA 138 block diagram

INA 138

Q1
 INA 138
• Load current IS is drawn from supply VS through
shunt resistor RS.
• The voltage drop in shunt resistor (VS) is forced
across the input terminals through resistors
causing current to flow into the collector of Q1.
• External resistor RL converts this current to a
voltage, VOUT, at the OUT pin.
• The output voltage is given by the equation
VOUT = (IS) (RS) (200μA/V) (RL)
Gain-Bandwidth of INA 138

Band width is a function of the

gain. Higher the gain lower the
bandwidth.
For a gain of 10, the bandwidth is
100 KHz.
The bandwidth also comes down
with capacitor across the output
resistor.
Common mode noise
Since the current sense signal is at the positive
high side, there is a high common mode voltage.
Any ac at this point can affect the performance
further.
The dc common rejection is 120 db. Thus a 60 V
common mode voltage gives an error of just 60
µV.
Things are different at high frequencies. At 100
KHz, for a differential gain of 10, the CMR is 60
dB. A 60 V swing will give 60 mV error which is
quite high. The signal measured is also in the
similar order.
Extending the range of common
mode voltage range.

Breakdown voltage of
MOSFET Q1 decides the
maximum common mode
voltage. INA sees only a
max voltage of only 39 V

Extending the
range of high side sensing
Current Sense amplifiers from other
manufacturers
• Analog Devices
– http://www.analog.com/en/subCat/0,2879,759%255F777%
• Linear Technology
– http://www.linear.com/pc/categoryProducts.jsp
• Maxim
– http://para.maxim-ic.com/results.mvp?q=cs_amp&r=0&an_
 Current Transformer sensing
• To measure ac, current transformer is the
best answer.
• But current transformer at 50 Hz is quite
bulky.
• Design of a current transformer is very
similar to a voltage transformer.
• Next few slides give the details.
 Current Transformer Design
Procedure
• Spec :
– Imax = 50 A
– Frequency = 50 Hz
– Turns ratio =100
– Full scale sense voltage = 1 V.
• Design:
– Output current = Imax / Turns ratio = 0.5 A
– Output Power = 0.5 VA.
– There are 2 software which will help us in doing the
further design. One is from ORCAD 15.1. Magnetics
Part Editor which may be invoked under the “PSpice
Accessories” is the tool. The other is from
“Magnetics”. This software is downloadable free from
the following url.
http://www.mag-inc.com/software/ctd1_3.zip
Package
• This software can design 3 types of
current transformer
– a) Traditional (like 50 HZ one)
– b) Hall effect
– c) SMPS (High frequency).
• For the 50 Hz one we need to use a
material that has a large Bmax.
• Magnetics offers 3 types of material
suitable for this application
– a) Magnesil Bmax = 1.8 Tesla
– b) 48 Alloy Bmax = 1.4 Tesla
– c) Supermalloy Bmax = 0.8 Tesla
• Burden refers to the resistor that needs to be
connected across the secondary to limit the
voltage at the output for max current.
• For our example the secondary current is 50/100
= 0.5 A. The burden resistance for limiting the
output to 1 V will be 1/ 0.5 A. This gives a
resistance value of 2 ohms. Bmax has been
chosen as 500 Gauss. This determines the
accuracy of measurement. To improve accuracy
we need to reduce Bmax which eventually
increases the size of the CT.
 Few design possibilities
Bmax Burden Material Accuracy Core
OD
5000 2Ω Magnesil 5.25% 1.5 “
5000 2Ω 48 Alloy 0.27% 1.5 “

5000 2Ω Superm 1.13% 1.5 “

alloy
3000 2Ω Magnesil 8.32 % 3.5”
3000 1Ω Magnesil 2.2% 1.15”

3000 0.5 Ω Magnesil 0.79% 1.0”

• Accuracy and size are dependent upon
burden, Bmax and material.
Lossless current sensing for
inductor

Conventional approach

Lossless approach
 Inductor current
sensing

So, if we make Lo/Rdc = R1*C1, then

VC =Io * Rdc