Self-test and auto-calibration in intelligent sensors : design aids for reconfigurable ASICs

Taner, Ali Haldun (1966) Self-test and auto-calibration in intelligent sensors : design aids for reconfigurable ASICs. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

Intelligent sensor research has reached a critical point, what might be termed the crisis of complexity. In these pages a novel approach is proposed and developed to avert this crisis. Techniques from the relatively new field of Virtual Instrumentation have been adapted to provide for the engineer a visual live model of the digitally-controlled analogue sub-system.

The key element within the intelligent sensor is the control program, and it is in the development of this that the crisis manifests itself in the sheer impossibility of maintaining a mind-model of the states of the system. Additional powerful facilities have been developed, such as a filter that automatically detects and prevents the implementation of forbidden states, providing immediate warning to the developer and a design aid for the development of a real-time frequency compensation filter. By embedding the sensor ASIC itself in a PC, it has proved possible to produce effective and, above all, verified control firmware.

An additional problem of complexity is that it is normally accompanied by a decrease in reliability. In order to overcome this, new techniques of self-test and auto-calibration have been implemented on a reconfigurable ASIC developed as the core of a research programme of which this thesis represents a key contribution.

The implications of virtual instrumentation techniques are fully explored in this thesis and it is shown that there are benefits not only in development but also in production and in the field. Thus, this new approach facilitates the whole range of intelligent sensor activities from development to utilisation.

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