Procedia Engineering

Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

Proc. Eurosensors XXV, September 4-7, 2011, Athens, Greece

Open-loop CMOS Current Transducer with Low Temperature Cross-sensitivity

M. Banjevica, F. Liakoub , B. Furrera, S. Dimitrijevicc, M. Blagojevicc, P. D. Dimitropoulosd and R. S. Popovica a*
a

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, EPFL-STI-IMT-LMIS1, Station 17, 1017 Lausanne, Switzerland b Center For Research and Technology Thessaly, Technology Park, 38500 Volos, Greece c Sentronis AD, Aleksandra Medvedeva 14, 18115 Nis, Serbia d SENSAP Microsystems, Electronic Systems and Software Applications SA, Hydras 2, 18346 Athens, Greece

Abstract We present an open-loop CMOS current transducer without magnetic core consisting of a bus bar and a CMOS integrated magnetic sensor. The magnetic sensor is a combination of a circular vertical Hall device for low-frequency range and a pick-up coil for high-frequency range. The temperature cross-sensitivity of the Hall device is removed by measuring the angle of the magnetic field vector rather than its magnitude. The first measurement results show nonlinearity less than 1.5 % over 0-150 A range, wide dynamic range 0-2.8 kA, high slew-rate 14 MA/s and low temperature cross-sensitivity 500 ppm/C over 100 C.

2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: open-loop current transducer; CMOS; circular vertical Hall device

1. Introduction Magnetic current transducers consist of a magnetic sensor measuring magnetic field produced by a measured current. A measured current is passed through a conductor usually referred to as the primary conductor. Almost all current transducers found in practice today contain a magnetic core around the primary conductor [1]. The magnetic core, usually a ferromagnetic toroidal core, amplifies magnetic field produced by a measured current. The toroidal core has an air gap in which a magnetic sensor is placed.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +41 21 6930925; fax: +41 21 693 66 70. E-mail address: mirjana.banjevic@epfl.ch

M. Banjevic et al./ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000000

The magnetic sensor usually contains a horizontal Hall device as a sensing device. All magnetic current transducers can be divided in two groups: closed-loop and open-loop current transducers [1]. The nonidealities of a magnetic sensor are eliminated in closed-loop current transducers owing to electromagnetic negative feedback, to the first approximation. However, remains the problem of low dynamic range due to saturation of the magnetic core. In open-loop current transducers available on market today the main challenge is reduction of the temperature cross-sensitivity of the magnetic sensor. The concept of the current transducers without magnetic core was patented recently [2]. It can be used in both open-loop and closed-loop configurations. Magnetic sensor is placed directly onto the surface of the primary conductor here referred to as the bus bar. The bus bar has a reduced diameter at the position of the sensor to increase the magnetic field and reduce the influence of the skin effect. The use of a bus bar and its design allow for wide dynamic range. Since the measured magnetic field is horizontal, a magnetic sensor must contain a device measuring in-plane magnetic field, i.e., a vertical Hall device. We present here an open-loop current transducer based on this concept. 2. Concept of the open-loop current transducer The magnetic sensor in the current transducer merges signals from two types of magnetic sensing devices [3]. It consists of a low-frequency sensor with a vertical Hall device, high-frequency sensor based on a pick-up coil, and a circuit for merging the low- and high-frequency signals, (flow is about 30 kHz) Fig. 1. The signal merging circuit will be described in detail elsewhere. The low-frequency channel consists of the angular sensor based on two eight-contact circular vertical Hall devices, 8CVHDs, and a tangent converter [4]. The block diagram of the angular sensor along with characteristic waveforms is given in Fig. 2a).

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the current transducer

The biasing and Hall voltage retrieval [4] is done clockwise for the 8CVHD in the first channel and counter clockwise for the 8CVHD in the second channel. In order to increase signal-to-noise and signalto-offset ratios, there is an array of four 8CVHDs per channel. The outputs of the 8CVHDs are summed, amplified and passed through the band-pass filters. The outputs of the band pass filters are: ASBtotIbiascos(2fscan-) for the clockwise channel, and ASBtotIbiascos(2fscan+) for the counter clockwise channel, where A is amplification of the preamplifier and bandpass filter, S is sensitivity of the device, Ibias is the biasing current of the device, Btot is the total field sensed by the device equal to the vector sum of the measured and reference fields, fscan is the scanning frequency of one full turn around the device, and is the angle between the total field Btot and the reference axis of the device. The signals are then brought to the comparators, the outputs of which are taken to two-input exclusive OR gate (XOR). The output of the XOR is a pulse width modulated signal (PWM) whose pulse width is proportional to twice the angle: 2/2 fscan. In the ideal case, the sensitivity drift with temperature of the 8CVHD does not

Author name / Procedia Engineering 00 (20111) 000000

affect the measured angle. The quasi-differential architecture containing two topologically identical channels reduces the temperature cross-sensitivity of the signal conditioning electronics. The measured angle is converted back into a signal proportional to the measured current by the tangent converter, Fig 2b). The output voltage of the low frequency channel is:

Vout

Vref R1Cf scan

tg

Vref R1Cf scan

(1) where Vref is externally supplied reference voltage, Fig. 2b), kbb is the constant relating the measured current Imeas and the magnetic field it generates Bmeas, R1 and C define the nonlinear integrator, and fscan is the scanning frequency. The pick-up coil for high frequency range gives the signal proportional to 2fmeas kcImeas, where fmeas is the frequency of the measured current, and kc is the coils constant. The coils output is passed through the first-order low pass filter. The pick-up coil is intrinsically almost temperature-insensitive.

kbb I meas Bref ,

a)

b)

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the low-frequency channel: a) angular sensor: left - block diagram, right - corresponding waveforms, b) tangent converter: top block diagram, bottom corresponding waveforms

3. Measurements The magnetic sensor was fabricated in AMS CMOS 0.35 m technology. The microphotograph of the low frequency channel is shown in Fig. 3a), while the measurement environment is shown in Fig 3b). The reference field for the low frequency channel was externally generated. The pick-up coil for the high frequency channel was drawn on the PCB. The first measurement results show temperature cross-sensitivity of 500 ppm/C over 100 C for the

M. Banjevic et al./ Procedia Engineering 00 (2011) 000000

reference field 60 mT. The measured nonlinearity of the current transducer is shown in Fig. 4a). The impulse response for the current pulse of 2.8 kA with slew rate 14 MA/s is shown in Fig. 4b).

b) a) Fig.3. a) Microphotograph of the low-frequency channel, b) bus bar with the low frequency channel PCB

a) b) Fig.4. a) Nonlinearity for the DC current through the bus-bar swept from -200 A to 200 A and Bref= 2.5 mT, b) Impulse response of the current transducer: The peak current value is the peak input voltage, 1.75 V, divided by the shunt resistance 0.62 m, yielding 2.8 kA (the measured field is around 80 mT).

Acknowledgements This work is funded by Marie Curie FP7 IAPP IHACS project (PIAP-GA-2008-217972). References
[1] E. Favre, W. Teppan, Capteurs de courant: chacun son argument, Mesures, No. 763, March 2004 [2] R. S. Popovic, Sensor and Procedure for Measuring Bus Bar Current with Skin Effect correction, international application number PCT/RS2007/000016 [3] L. Dalessandro, N. Karrer, and J.W. Kolar, High-Performance Planar Isolated Current Sensor for Power Electronics Applications, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 22. No. 5, September 2007 [4] R. Popovic and M. Banjevic, Magnetic Field Sensor Measuring a Direction of a Magnetic Field in a Plane and Current Sensor, International patent Application, published on 15.10.2009