Developing passive MEMS DC/AC current sensor applicable to two-wire appliances with high measurement accuracy

摘要

A passive MEMS DC/AC current sensor with high measurement accuracy, accomplished by the methodology combining both the "stress-equilibrium" solution and the "position-free" solution, was proposed for measuring electricity consumption of household equipment and Information and Communication Technology devices. For the "stress-equilibrium" solution, slots between two adjacent piezoelectric plates are implemented to minimize the distribution difference of the uneven stress close to the fixed end. The measurement error caused by the uneven stress distribution is decreased from 9% to 4% for ten-piezoelectric-plates and from 8% to 0.5% for three-piezoelectric-plates, respectively. For the "position-free" consideration, an array comprised of four piezoelectric cantilevers is proposed to eliminate the positional error resulted by the uneven magnetic field distribution generated by the test object of electric currents. And the solution is proofed to be an effective method to eliminate the positional error by theoretical and simulation analysis. In light of the above preliminary results, the passive MEMS DC/AC current sensor is believed to be useful to achieve high measurement accuracy via integrating the "stress-equilibrium" and the "position-free" designs. The newly proposed current sensor with high measurement accuracy is applicable to two-wire appliance cord without using any cord separator like that used in Hall-effect based sensor. `