Auto-compensation of nonlinear influence of environmental parameters on the sensor characteristics using neural networks

Usually the environmental parameters influence the sensor characteristics in a nonlinear manner. Therefore obtaining correct readout from a sensor under varying environmental conditions is a complex problem. In this paper we propose a neural network (NN)-based interface framework to automatically compensate for the nonlinear influence of the environmental temperature and the nonlinear-response characteristics of a capacitive pressure sensor (CPS) to provide correct readout. With extensive simulation studies we have shown that the NN-based inverse model of the CPS can estimate the applied pressure with a maximum error of +/- 1.0% for a wide temperature variation from 0 to 250 degrees C. A microcontroller unit-based implementation scheme is also proposed.