Texas Instruments was named the winner of the most innovative product in the Industrial category of the Best of Sensors Awards 2020 for its TMCS1100 and TMCS1101 zero-drift Hall-effect current sensors. Entries were judged and winners selected on the basis of value to the marketplace, uniqueness of the design, and the impact (i.e., the “bigness” of the problems solved or issues addressed).
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globally. TI is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog chips and embedded processors. The company also produces TI digital light processing technology and education technology products, including calculators, microcontrollers and multi-core processors. Well known as a technology innovator, the company held 45,000 patents worldwide as of 2016.
A key feature of today’s world is the use of sensor technology. From huge edifices like smart buildings to self-driving cars to the smallest of wearable devices, systems are making real-time decisions based on what they sense. System designers can leverage TI’s innovative sensors to accurately deliver information from the physical to the digital world in order to enable intelligent autonomy.
TI’s sensor portfolio includes temperature sensors, mmWave radar sensors, current sensing solutions, magnetic sensors (including Hall-effect sensors), humidity sensors, and specialty sensing devices.
A Hall-effect sensor (or simply Hall sensor) is a device that can be used to measure the magnitude of a magnetic field. The output voltage from a Hall-effect sensor is directly proportional to the magnetic field strength passing through it. Hall-effect sensors are used for a wide variety of proximity sensing, positioning, speed detection, and current sensing applications.
Ongoing demand for higher performance in industrial systems is driving the need for more precise current measurement coupled with reliable operation. Unfortunately, these attributes often come with the cost of increased board space and/or design complexity. TI has applied its expertise in both isolation and high-precision analog to the development of the TMCS1100 and TMCS1101 Hall-effect sensors, enabling engineers to design systems that will provide consistent performance and diagnostics over a longer device lifetime, keeping its solution size compact without increasing design time.
With the TMCS1100 and TMCS1101, TI introduced the industry’s first zero-drift Hall-effect current sensors. These devices enable the lowest drift and highest accuracy over time and temperature while providing reliable 3-kVrms isolation, which is especially important for AC or DC high-voltage systems such as industrial motor drives, solar inverters, energy-storage equipment and power supplies.
The zero-drift architecture and real-time sensitivity compensation of the TMCS1100 and TMCS1101 enable extremely high performance, even under operational conditions such as temperature changes and equipment aging. With an industry-leading total sensitivity drift over temperature of 0.45%, maximum, which is at least 200% lower than other magnetic current sensors, and a maximum full-scale offset drift of <0.1%, these devices provide the highest measurement accuracy and reliability across a wide range of current. Further, a 0.5% lifetime sensitivity drift, which is at least 100% lower than other magnetic current sensors, significantly reduces the performance degradation associated with system aging over time.
“Current measurement devices play a crucial role in monitoring electrical systems, including industrial motor drives, energy-storage devices, and power supplies—for which performance is everything today. But these measurement devices are prone to thermal drift—something that engineers have to cope with and correct for in their designs. TI’s announcement of the industry’s first, zero-drift Hall-effect current sensors is significant in that the devices will provide unprecedented measurement accuracy and a reduction in performance degradation over time, simplifying the overall design and leading to better overall system performance,” said Judge Karen Field, Content Director for FierceElectronics.
For full list of finalists in the Best of Sensors 2020 Awards:
https://www.fierceelectronics.com/sensors/best-sensors-awards-2020-finalists-announced