Industrial design of a solid-state wind sensor

This paper describes the industrial realization of a solid-state wind sensor, that is one without moving parts. The sensor's key component is a heated silicon chip that is nonuniformly cooled by the wind. The resulting flow-induced temperature gradient in the chip is measured by integrated thermopiles. Their output is digitized and processed by a microprocessor in order to determine wind speed and direction. For wind speeds between 0.1 and 25 m/s, the errors in the computed wind speed and direction are less than 0.5 m/s (or /spl plusmn/3%) and /spl plusmn/3/spl deg/ respectively.