A Broadband Current Sensor based on the X-Hall Architecture

Current sensing is one of the most important functions in power electronic applications and space applications such as different power consuming modules of a spacecraft subsystem. In conventional current-sensing methods a resistor is inserted in the path of the current to be sensed. This method incurs significant power losses, especially when the current to be sensed is high. Hall Effect current sensors provide lossless and isolated current-sensing solution, by sensing the current without dissipating the power that passive resistors do. This work focuses on analysing the performance characteristics of few new types of Hall Effect current sensors available today. Also a comparative analysis is done by comparing the performance of certain new current sensors against the performance of the current sensor that is currently being used in satellite systems. The objective of such an analysis is to determine if the newly available Hall Effect current sensors could give better performance than the presently used one, so that it could be replaced for deriving performance and cost benefits. The performance characteristics are plotted and viewed in LabVIEW platform.

IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 2002

A highly sensitive magnetic sensor microsystem based on a Hall device is presented. This microsystem consists of a Hall device improved by an integrated magnetic concentrator and new circuit architecture for the signal processing. It provides an amplification of the sensor signal with a resolution better than 30 V and a periodic offset cancellation while the output of the microsystem is available in continuous time. This microsystem features the overall magnetic gain of 420 V/T.

Facta universitatis - series: Electronics and Energetics, 2016

The paper provides an overview of coreless open-loop current transducers based on Hall effect sensor CSA-1V. Depending on the implementation method and current range, the presented transducers are divided in the four groups. The transducers are capable to measure AC and DC currents ranging from several tens of miliamperes up to several hundreds of amperes. Methods for resolving issues with the skin effect and stray magnetic fields are also presented including the experimental test results. Some of these methods are novelty and have never been presented in literature.

2018

Many modern electronic devices utilize linear Hall sensors to measure current and the magnetic field, as well as to perform switching and latching operations. Smartphones, laptops, and e-readers all work with very low (sub-mA) currents. To perform a switching function in such low-power devices, however, a Hall sensor must be able to work in the {\mu}A regime. This paper demonstrates, for the first time, the ability of a standard Hall detector to work in the {\mu}A regime between 0 and 0.7 Tesla. A second important application of this technology is the measurement of electron transport parameters in thin films, which is essential to elucidating their electronic behavior. The development of new devices using thin films demands very precise measurements of tiny electrical currents, low-intensity magnetic fields, and other small signals. The proposed system delivers a very small but stable electric current without external noise, and can be used to measure small transport parameters wit...

Sensors and Actuators A: Physical

We present a highly sensitive Hall device fabricated in a standard CMOS technology and combined with integrated flux concentrators acting as magnetic amplifiers. The active area of the Hall plate is in a buried n-well with a shape optimized by removing the parts less sensitive to the magnetic field. The effect of the shape of the concentrators is studied. This results in the design of elliptical shape integrated concentrators for the optimization of the sensitivity, and of the measurement range, as well as for the decrease of the overall chip size. The CMOS sensor combined with the optimized concentrators has a sensitivity of 2.1 VrT with a 4 V bias, the lowest detectable field is 0.2 mT in a frequency range of 10 y3-10 Hz and the linearity is better than 1% in a "16 mT measurement range.

Journal of Magnetics, 2014

Recent years have seen an increasing range of planar Hall resistive (PHR) sensor applications in the field of magnetic sensing. This study describes a new application of the PHR sensor to monitor a current. Initially, thermal drift experiments of the PHR sensor are performed, to determine the accuracy of the PHR signal output. The results of the thermal drift experiments show that there is no considerable drift in the signals attained from 0.1, 0.5, 1 and 2 mA current. Consequently, the PHR sensor provides adequate accuracy of the signal output, to perform the current monitoring experiments. The performances of the PHR sensor with bilayer and trilayer structures are then tested. The minimum detectable currents of the PHR sensor using bilayer and trilayer structures are 0.51 µA and 54 nA, respectively. Therefore, the PHR sensor having trilayer structure is the better choice to detect ultra low current of few tens nanoampere.

EPJ Web of Conferences, 2013

This work deals with a cobalt-based alloy thin film magnetic concentrator (MC) which is fully integrated on a Hall sensor integrated circuit (IC) developed in the 0.35 µm Bipolar CMOS DMOS (BCD) technology on 8" silicon wafer. An amorphous magnetic film with a thickness of 1µm, coercitive field H c <10A/m and saturation magnetization (µ 0 M S) of 0.45T has been obtained with a sputtering process. The Hall sensor IC has shown sensitivity to magnetic field at room temperature of 240V/AT without concentrator and 2550V/AT with concentrator, gaining a factor of 10.5. A current sensor demonstrator has been realized showing linear response in the range-50 to 50A.

Many modern electronic devices utilize linear Hall sensors[1] to measure current and the magnetic field, as well as to perform switching and latching operations[2]. Smartphones, laptops, and e-readers all work with very low (sub-mA) currents. To perform a switching function in such low-power devices, however, a Hall sensor must be able to work in the µA regime. This paper demonstrates, for the first time, the ability of a standard Hall detector to work in the A regime between 0 and 0.7 Tesla. A second important application of this technology is the measurement of electron transport parameters in thin films, which is essential to elucidating their electronic behavior. The development of new devices using thin films demands very precise measurements of tiny electrical currents, low-intensity magnetic fields, and other small signals. The proposed system delivers a very small but stable electric current without external noise, and can be used to measure small transport parameters with very high precision. We demonstrate the capabilities of this system by measuring the slope of the Hall effect[3] with a four-point probe at current intensities of 100, 10, and 1 µA.

This paper report a newly developed high DC current sensor by using a Hall effect method and also the measurement system. The Hall effect sensor receive the magnetic field generated by a current carrying conductor wire. The SS49E (Honeywell) magnetoresistive sensor was employed to sense the magnetic field from the field concentrator. The voltage received from SS49E then converted into digital by using analog to digital converter (ADC-10 bit). The digital data then processed in the microcontroller to be displayed as the value of the electric current in the LCD display. In addition the measurement was interfaced into Personal Computer (PC) using the communication protocols of RS232 which was finally displayed in real-time graphical form on the PC display. The performance test on the range ± 40 Ampere showed that the maximum relative error is 5.26%. It is concluded that the sensors and the measurement system worked properly according to the design with acceptable accuracy.

The resolution of a magnetic sensor depends on its intrinsic noise, offset instability and the magnetic sensitivity. Both noise and offset can be substantially reduced by the spinning current technique. The effective magnetic sensitivity can be increased by the application of a magnetic flux concentrator. The physical limit of magnetic sensitivity is estimated. Values of sensitivity, noise and offset of various discrete and integrated horizontal and vertical Hall devices, and of sensor systems are given. High resolution integrated Hall sensors are currently mostly used as compass in mobile phones.