Sensors proliferate

The boom is light on wireless, heavy on integration.

The rise of automotive microprocessors has brought an explosion in the usage of sensors that tell these controlled units about the real-world environment in the vehicles they monitor. The broad sensor industry's trend toward wireless is being adopted on a limited basis, while the industry is definitely following the ongoing integration of logic and sensing elements, though not all designs lend themselves to single-chip solutions.

Solid-state sensors have followed a traditional path for electronics, gaining usage as they drop in price and size. For example, the use of accelerometers that sense collisions and tell microprocessors it might be time to fire airbags typify the boom in sensors. “A typical platform that might have had one crash sensor now has four to six accelerometers,” said David Zawadzki, Product Manager at Analog Devices Inc.'s Micromachined Products Division.