Microcontroller based electric field mill sensor interface

The measurement of electric field for applications where atmospheric/meteorological phenomena are examined, as well as in industry applications, provides a great amount of information regarding lightning incidents and safety margins. In this paper, the electric field mill sensor - the prominent sensor employed for electric field measurements - was studied, and an interface circuit was designed and successfully tested. More specifically, a two-stage amplification circuit was designed which was comprised of a charge amplifier for charge to voltage conversion and an inverting amplifier for further amplification and fine tuning. A low noise operational amplifier was selected and used so that the noise levels were kept at minimum levels. Differential measurements were also taken and compared to the single-ended measurements. An Arduino microcontroller was implemented to complete the interface and its operation was the extraction of the electric field values.