National Semiconductor Revolutionizes Design of Sensor Systems

The configurable sensor AFE ICs and WEBENCH® Sensor AFE Designer enable the design engineer to select a sensor, design and configure the solution and download configuration data to the sensor AFE. A typical sensing application that today may require several boards and up to 25 components is reduced to just one of National’s ICs. Weeks or months to create a sensor system design is reduced to just minutes using National’s new products and tools.

Sensor systems today are used in every major industry for critical monitoring and control applications. These systems are shrinking in size, must consume less power and have higher reliability.

“Sensor-based system designs are time-consuming and complicated to develop, requiring an optimal design for each system,” said Anita Ganti, Precision Systems Business Unit Director at National. “Until now, designers have developed customized analogue solutions that took weeks or even months to develop, but we can now help them get to market more quickly.”

The first in a family of products, National’s two configurable sensor AFE products are each customized to a specific sensor application and have a variety of features, including programmable current sources, voltage reference options and adjustable sample rates. The LMP91000 is the industry’s first fully configurable, low-power potentiostat that provides a complete, integrated signal path solution between a sensor and analogue-to-digital converter (ADC). The LMP90100 is the industry’s first multi-channel, low power, 24-bit sensor AFE with true continuous background calibration and diagnostics for high performance transmitter and transducer applications.

The WEBENCH Sensor AFE Designer includes technical specifications for hundreds of temperature, pressure and chemical sensors. The database features products from Omega Engineering, Inc., Honeywell Sensing & Control, Tempco Electric Heater Corp. and All Sensors Corp.