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Now in its third edition, Understanding Smart Sensors is the most complete, up-to-date, and authoritative summary of the latest applications and developments impacting smart sensors in a single volume. This thoroughly expanded and revised edition of an Artech bestseller contains a wealth of new material, including critical coverage of sensor fusion and energy harvesting, the latest details on wireless technology, the role and challenges involved with sensor apps and cloud sensing, greater emphasis on applications throughout the book, and dozens of figures and examples of current technologies from over 50 companies. This edition provides you with knowledge regarding a broad spectrum of possibilities for technology advancements based on current industry, university and national laboratories R & D efforts in smart sensors. Updated material also identifies the need for trusted sensing, the efforts of many organizations that impact smart sensing, and more.

Various sensing technologies are used today for collision avoidance, blind spot detection, and other vision enhancing systems in luxury vehicles. These sensing technologies include radar, lidar, infrared, and ultrasonic sensing as well as CCD and CMOS imaging and, in most cases, require intensive and sophisticated computing capability to implement. Turning these systems and those still in the development phase into standard or optional features on mid-range vehicles will require performance enhancements and considerable cost reduction. However, affordable vehicle systems that anticipate accidents and allow the driver and/or the vehicle itself to avoid them could provide one of the most remarkable vehicle safety advances. This paper will review automotive industry goals and objectives for vision-based systems and present the electronics industries’ current and projected capability to meet these demands.

The transition of the vehicle from mechanical to mechatronics systems is encountering some technology tollbooths. The increasing number and level of vehicle electrical loads cannot be met with the existing automotive electrical system and will eventually require the vehicle's primary voltage to increase to 42V to minimize current, copper cost, wiring harness size and weight, and even di/dt. At the same time, the increasing power requirements for newer loads that range from 1 to 20kW limit the use of existing semiconductor techniques to control these loads. Automakers have already started to implement or plan for the changes in the vehicle's architecture. Automotive electronic suppliers have designed systems to provide power management. However, non-automotive systems that are in production may have features that could be emulated in the automotive environment. Adapting the behaviors of other industries could also provide benefits of reduced time to market as well.

As features in vehicles and their associated loading on the vehicle's power supply increase, the existing 14V power supply system is being pushed to its limits. At some point it will be necessary to provide a complementary higher supply voltage for higher power loads to ensure reliable operation. Industry efforts have been underway to define the next step(s) toward a common architecture. These efforts are currently focused on a dual voltage 14V/42V system with specified voltage limits. A change in the vehicle's power supply voltage and over-voltage specifications have a direct impact on semiconductors. Cost, reliability, available process technology, and packaging are among the areas that are affected. Reducing or eliminating the load dump transient can provide cost reduction, especially for power switching devices. Smart semiconductor switches with integrated diagnostic and protection features provide the potential to replace fuses in the new architecture.

Automotive development time precludes the timely integration of the latest developments in consumer items such as cellular phones, pagers, portable digital assistants, global positioning systems and other communication, computing and entertainment products into the automobile. Consumers, on the other hand, want access to the latest services and features provided by these devices when traveling. At the same time, consumers do not want to duplicate their expenses by dedicating this equipment to their cars. This paper will outline a current industry effort to define a solution for meeting the networking needs of these consumer products in the automotive environment.

Electro-Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) is a qualification requirement for automotive electronic components. Meeting for requirement can be a challenge, especially for devices in plastic packages with minimal shielding. EMC has a twofold meaning: a) radiation of electromagnetic energy below a certain level in order to prevent negative impact on electrical performance of surrounding devices, and b) lower susceptibility or greater resistance to the present electromagnetic (EM) signals. Our concern in this paper is the latter one - susceptibility of pressure sensors with integrated signal conditioning including amplification. Electrical performance of these sensors in an environment that is more and more contaminated with EM energy is very crucial for a number of automotive applications. The Integrated Pressure Sensors (IPS) will be used as an example for EMC testing. The EMC test setups and characterization results of the IPS will be discussed.

The increasing complexity in automotive systems is resulting in the need for more extensive diagnostics and protection, especially at the output (high stress) portion of the system. These diagnostics are inputs to the vehicle control system which can provide an immediate indication to the driver of the need for servicing and store information for subsequent interrogation by service diagnostic equipment. This paper will present techniques for fault protection, diagnosing faults and obtaining bidirectional communication between various vehicle loads and microcontrollers (MCUs) in vehicle electronic systems through the use of power ICs (integrated circuits) with embedded sensors. The power handling capability of these devices combined with integrated circuit design allows considerable simplification of printed circuit board layout and reduction in electronic module size, while providing the possibility of sophisticated communications with the MCU.

Silicon by virtue of its electrical and mechanical properties is eminently suited for use in mechanical and other types of sensors. The integration of these sensors with signal conditioning circuits is being used to develop a wide variety of cost effective devices for use in automotive applications. A number of micromachining techniques and methods of converting mechanical force to electrical signals are available. Each of these must be evaluated for ease of integration with respect to the types of signal conditioning that are required to obtain the most cost effective system solution. Additional factors that have to be considered are analog versus digital outputs, temperature operating range, linearity, self test features, reliability, packaging, testing and assembly problems. This paper will explore and evaluate these features for silicon pressure, position and acceleration (crash) sensors developed for automotive applications.

Doubling or quadrupling the present 12V electrical system provides advantages and disadvantages to many components, and to systems that utilize these components. The effect that this increase has on vehicle electronics starts at the semiconductor component level. Several design implications including technology tradeoffs must be evaluated, and the cost impact on silicon area, processing complexity, and current process limitations considered. This paper focuses on the impact of increasing the system voltage to 24V or 48V with and without centralized load dump transient suppression. The semiconductor devices principally affected are transient suppression devices, power semiconductors, smart power ICs and linear drivers. In addition, the effect of a change in system voltage on MCUs, DSPs, memory devices, and other interface circuits will be discussed.

New approaches to the design of automotive electronic systems can be used to achieve reliability and cost objectives for future vehicles. Present systems can benefit by applying fault tolerant design concepts. This paper is in two sections. The first section discusses the application of fault tolerant concepts to ECU design. The second portion covers the important role played by sensors in fault tolerant system designs.

New systems and extended warranties have added requirements to controlling automotive loads that will accelerate the rate at which semiconductor switches are used in new models. These requirements could mean the eventual replacement of electro-mechanical relays. This paper will examine the requirements of the new automotive “relay” and describe three semiconductor technologies - bipolar, power MOS and smart power - that are being used to provide the power-to-load interface for present and future automobiles. The technology used for each approach and its advantages and disadvantages will be discussed and examples of typical automotive applications will be provided. Also, the packaging and mounting considerations for semiconductor devices in the role of a replacement for relays will be discussed.

Electronics has been providing custom features, increased reliability, extended component life and, in general, solving complex automotive problems since the first solid state radios and voltage regulators were introduced into the automotive environment in the early 60's. More recently, microprocessors, solid state sensors and power electronics have dramatically added to the number of automotive applications. Multipoint fuel injection, anti-skid brake systems and electronic transmissions are made possible only by the availability of highly reliable and cost effective electronic components. Significant advances are occurring in the area of power electronics which will further enhance future vehicles' safety, performance, economy and comfort. This paper will discuss a number of devices and their potential application to existing and future automotive systems.