A. Giambastiani

Platform Based Design for Automotive Sensor Conditioning

A general architecture suitable for interfacing several kinds of sensors for automotive applications is presented. A platform based design approach is pursued to improve system performance while minimizing time-to-market. The platform is composed of an analog front-end and a digital section. The latter is based on a microcontroller core (8051 IP by Oregano) plus a set of hardware dedicated to the complex signal processing required for sensor conditioning. The microcontroller also handles the communication with external devices (such as a PC) for data output and fast prototyping. A case study is presented concerning the conditioning of a gyro yaw rate sensor for automotive applications. Measured performance results outperform current state-of-the-art commercial devices.

Intelligent sensor interface for automotive applications

This paper presents a new platform for interfacing a generic sensor for automotive applications, called ISIF (Intelligent Sensor InterFace). Such platform consists in a wide set of optimized high performance analog, digital and software IPs for various kind of sensors. These IPs can be extracted for fast prototyping accurate and reliable interface circuits for the target automotive application. Therefore the main advantage of this platform-based design approach is to give the possibility to bring up complex and ad-hoc sensor conditioning systems, reducing development risks, design effort, power consumption, costs and time-to-market.

A mixed-signal embedded platform for automotive sensor conditioning

A mixed-signal embedded system called Intelligent Sensor InterFace (ISIF) suited to fast identify, trim, and verify an architecture to interface a given sensor is presented. This system has been developed according to a platform-based design approach, a methodology that has proved to be efficient for building complex mixed-signal embedded systems with short time-to-market. Such platform consists in a wide set of optimized high-performance analog, digital, and software intellectual property (IP) modules for various kinds of sensors. These IPs can be easily defined for fast prototyping of the interface circuit for the given sensor. Final ASIC implementation for the given sensor conditioning can be easily derived with reduced risk and short development time. Some case examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and flexibility of this system.

An Integrated Flow from pre-Silicon Simulation to post-Silicon Verification

This paper presents an integrated flow to bridge the existing gap from pre-silicon simulation to post-silicon verification environments. This flow features automatic reproduction in lab of the test-bench used in simulation and sharing of data between design and test environments. A design for testability (DFT) approach has been also used to increase the controllability and observability of the system. This integrated flow has been successfully used to validate a mixed-signal IC developed by SensorDynamicsAG for sensor conditioning leading to time and cost reduction and to an increased reliability and quality of the overall test phase (simulation and verification)

Fast Prototyping Flow for Sensor Interfaces

Sensor applications require always more performing sensors together with size, power and area reduction. For this reason a platform based design has been developed in order to implement an intelligent sensor interface (ISIF) for conditioning several kinds of MEMS (micro electro mechanical system) sensors. This system is composed of an analog front end and a digital section: analog blocks perform signal acquisition and basic conditioning functions, while few digital IPs perform usually needed digital signal processing such as modulation/demodulation and sine wave generation. A 32-bit RISC (reduced instruction set computer) processor is also present to implement via software all the digital signal processing (DSP) functions not included in hardware, manage system configuration and provide communication resources. Both analog and digital IPs (intellectual property) are highly programmable, as well as their interconnections, in order to provide a wide range of data paths. Several DSP software routines have also been implemented, replicating the behavior of hardware IPs. In this way ISIF can fast prototype a new sensor interface straight in its application field, drastically shortening the development time of full-hardware optimized sensor interfaces

Low-g accelerometer fast prototyping for automotive applications

This paper presents an application of the ISIF chip (intelligent sensor interface), for conditioning a dual-axis low-g accelerometer in MEMS technology. MEMS are nowadays the standard in automotive applications (and not only), as they feature a drastic reduction in cost, area and power, while they require a more complex electronic interface with respect to traditional discrete devices. ISIF is a platform on chip implementation, aiming to fast prototype a wide range of automotive sensors thanks to its high configuration resources, achieved both by full analog / digital IPs trimming options and by flexible routing structures. This accelerometer implementation exploits a relevant part of ISIF hardware resources, but also requires signal processing add-ins (software emulation of digital DSP blocks) for the closed loop conditioning architecture and for performance improvement (for example temperature drift compensation). In spite the short prototyping time, the resulting system achieves good performances with respect to commercial devices, featuring a 0.9 mg/radicHz noise density with 1024 LSB/g sensitivity on the digital output over a +/- 2g FS, and an offset drift over 100degC range within 30 mg, with 2% of FS sensitivity drift. Miniboards have been developed as product prototypes, consisting of a small PCB with ISIF and accelerometer dies bonded together, firmware embedded in EEPROM and communication transceivers

Experiencing with AMR sensor conditioning in automotive field

AMR (anisotropic magnetoresistive) sensors are versatile sensors which can be used in a wide range of automotive applications. This paper presents the development of an AMR sensor interface prototype based on the intelligent sensor interface (ISIF) and designed following the platform based design flow. The ISIF is composed by an analog front-end and a digital section. The analog section performs signal acquisition and provides stimuli to the sensor, while the digital section provides digital signal processing IPs (intellectual properties) and a 32-bit RISC (reduced instruction set) DSP (digital signal processor) for important software routines of signal processing, calibration and temperature compensation. An AMR commercial sensor, used for linear position measurement, has been chosen as case study for the verification of the overall interface prototype. Finally, system test results and performances are presented.