Hardware-Software Design for Autonomous Sensors

A new hardware-software interface for autonomous sensors has been designed with the objective of providing a low power consumption and high performance interface for the measuring of transduction elements commonly used in industrial applications: temperature, resistive bridges, accelerometers, capacitive and pressure sensors. It integrates a Generic Transducer Interface, which is an analog front-end for low frequency measurement applications and offers a duty-cycle output, and two other specialized interfaces for acceleration and pressure sensors. The pressure sensor interface is specifically designed for its use with Ikerlan-Cidetec patented flexible pressure sensors based on conductive polymers. The hardware-software platform is based on the new MICAz OEM module (MPR2600 from Crossbow) and the TinyOs operating system.