Instrumentation and sensors

Teacher(s)

Bol David (coordinator); Francis Laurent;

Language

English
> French-friendly

Prerequisites

Students are expected to master the following skills: continuous-time and discrete-time signal representation both in time and frequency domains, mathematical system representations (transfer function, impulse response, filtering), principles and properties of Fourier, Laplace and z transforms, analysis of electrical circuits based on passive components (R, L, C), in DC, transient and AC regimes, understanding of general behavior of operational amplifiers, diodes and transistors with the associated basic electronic circuits, as they are covered within the courses LFSAB1106, LELEC1370 and LELEC1530

Main themes

Our world is more and more digital with the increasing presence of information and electronic systems in industry, transportation, health cares and everyday's life. Many of the digital applications in these fields require the automatic acquisition of quantities from the physical world. In this course, we study the instrumentation chain and the sensors capable to perform this acquisition of physical quantities to translate them into analog electrical signals and then digital data.
In this course, we will present different types of sensors used for the transduction of several physical values, e.g., occupancy, mechanical, acoustic, optical, bio/chemical, ' and the  associated electronic circuits for signal conditioning and data transmission. We will highlight the figures of merit of the instrumentation chain and all sources of errrors along it

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	With respect to the AA referring system defined for the Master in Electrical Engineering, the course contributes to the develoopment, mastery and assessment of the following skills : AA1.1, AA1.2, AA1.3 AA2.1, AA2.2 AA3.1, AA3.3 AA4.1, AA4.2, AA4.3, AA4.4 AA5.3, AA5.4, AA5.5 After this course, the student will be able to : Describe the operation principles of various classes of sensors Select sensors for a given application Size, realise and characterise a complete instrumentation chain Understand and use datasheets Present a written report of the results of group project

Content

In this course course, we study the key basic concepts in sensor systems and their associated instrumentation.

• Sensor definition, classification and characterisation
• Noise, non idealities and calibration in sensor systems
• Principles of transduction ruling the conversion from primary physical signals to electrical signals.
• Analog signal conditioning (sensor interface, instrumentation amplifier, filters, instrumentation bridges).
• Principles and techniques of sensor data acquisition
• Types of digital signal processing (denoising) and data processing (feature extraction, event detection, classification) in sensor systems.
• Some frequent applications in the industrial field will be considered: measure of displacement, speed, force, acceleration, pressure, temperature, light, acoustic.

Teaching methods

The course combines lectures to introduce the key concepts with problem-based learning with a practical group project and a few exercise sessions.

Evaluation methods

See the French version.

Online resources

Moodle
https://moodle.uclouvain.be/course/view.php?id=680

Bibliography

Livre de référence disponible à la BST : J. Fraden, Handbook of Modern Sensors: Physics, Designs, and Applications. 4th ed. Springer, 2010. ISBN: 9781441964656.
 

Teaching materials

• Transparents des cours, chapitres du livre de référence, disponibles en ligne

Faculty or entity

ELEC