Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padua, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jan 26;22(3):961. doi: 10.3390/s22030961.
Miniaturization and on-chip integration are major lines of research in many branches of science and technology developments, undoubtedly in sensor technology. Fluxgate magnetometers are very sensitive, and accurate magnetic sensors able to detect weak fields both AC and DC, which in recent years saw a great effort in minimizing their dimensions, weight, and power consumption. The physics behind the fluxgate principle is rather complex and makes simulations difficult and only partially used in the literature. The limited physical access to micro sensors for measurements and the need to optimize the entire integrated system, including the sensor geometry and the excitation and readout circuits, make numerical analyses particularly useful in the design of miniaturized sensors. After a thorough review of the miniaturized solutions proposed so far, the present paper examines in detail the possibility of adopting a model based approach for designing miniaturized fluxgate sensors. The model of the fluxgate effect of two different technologies proposed in the literature has been implemented to benchmark simulation results with real data. In addition to the advantages for an optimized design, the implementation and computational challenges of the numerical analyses are precisely outlined.
微型化和芯片集成是许多科学和技术发展分支的主要研究方向，无疑在传感器技术中也是如此。磁通门磁力计是非常敏感和精确的磁场传感器，能够检测交流和直流的弱磁场，近年来在最小化其尺寸、重量和功耗方面取得了很大的进展。磁通门原理背后的物理原理相当复杂，使得模拟变得困难，并且在文献中仅部分使用。由于对微传感器进行测量的物理访问有限，以及需要优化整个集成系统，包括传感器几何形状以及激励和读出电路，因此数值分析在微型传感器的设计中特别有用。在彻底审查了迄今为止提出的小型化解决方案之后，本文详细研究了采用基于模型的方法来设计微型磁通门传感器的可能性。本文实现了文献中提出的两种不同技术的磁通门效应模型，以便将模拟结果与实际数据进行基准测试。除了优化设计的优势外，还详细说明了数值分析的实现和计算挑战。
