ABSTRACT

Sensors provide us with a means of generating signals that can be used as inputs to electronic circuits. The things that we might want to sense include physical parameters such as temperature, light level and pressure. Being able to generate an electrical signal that accurately represents these quantities allows us not only to measure and record these values but also to control them.

Sensors are, in fact, a subset of a larger family of devices known as transducers so we will consider these before we look at sensors and how we condition the signals that they produce in greater detail. We begin, however, with a brief introduction to the instrumentation and control systems in which sensors, transducers and signal conditioning circuits are used.