Providing Nonlinear Temperature Compensation for Sensing Means by Use of Pade Approximant Function Emulators

摘要

Sensors and/or transducers can exhibit nonlinear response to temperature changes in terms of offset and also in terms of sensitivity to variations in a sensed physical attribute (pressure, strain, displacement, etc.). Padé Approximant function emulators are used to model the nonlinear offset and/or nonlinear sensitivity behaviors of a given sensing means relative to one or more temperature sub-ranges and to produce temperature compensating corrections for both offset and sensitivity as may be desired. In order to avoid use of brute force division for generating the Pade' Approximant function signals, in one set of embodiments, feedback is used to provide a corresponding effect. In order to minimize the number of coefficients that are to be resolved and stored, in one set of embodiments, first or higher order Pade' Approximants with normalized denominators are used so that each function can be defined with just three coefficients. Embodiments that are more analog in nature or more digital in nature are disclosed. Methods for resolving the Pade' Approximant coefficients and calibrating each sensor unit on a mass production basis are also disclosed.