Redundant Combinatory Readout for Fault-Tolerant Sensor Arrays
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Solution Overview
Problem
Field sensors, particularly in critical applications like automotive systems, face challenges with measurement drift, sensitivity variations, and material defects leading to faults and inaccuracies, necessitating effective diagnostic capabilities to detect and correct faults in real-time.
Innovation Solution
A field-sensor device with redundant measurements from sensors arranged in different orientations, utilizing a control circuit to convert and compare signals from multiple sensors to identify faulty sensors and provide accurate output signals, ensuring continuous operation even when one sensor fails.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multiple field sensors are used to detect faults, then diagnostic capability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system divides the sensing function into multiple independent field sensors (first field sensor and second field sensor) with different orientations. Each sensor independently measures the same environmental attribute, enabling fault detection through comparison while maintaining modular simplicity in the overall device architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
Multiple field sensors with different orientations are combined to work together on the same measurement task. The control circuit merges their outputs through coordinate system conversion and comparison, achieving enhanced diagnostic capability while using a unified control architecture that manages the combined sensor data.
2Measurement precision
If sensor signals are converted to common orientation for comparison, then measurement accuracy is improved, but processing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The control circuit changes the coordinate system parameters of sensor signals to enable direct comparison. By converting signals from different sensor orientations into a common coordinate system, the system achieves accurate fault detection while using systematic parameter transformation rather than complex physical reorientation.
Data Source
AI summary
The present invention relates to a sensor device comprising four or more sensor elements. A controller comprising a control circuit controls the sensor elements to measure an environment attribute, produces more than two values corresponding to the measurement and compares the values to determine a fault. The more than two values are obtained by different combinations of sensor elements that have at least one sensor element in common and one sensor element that is not in common. The values can be measured in different coordinate systems and the control circuit can convert the field vectors into a common coordinate system.