Differential Pressure Sensors for Gases
Differential pressure sensors from Superior Sensor Technology are extremely accurate, stable and offer unique design flexibility to easily fit a wide variety of applications. Each product family is optimized for specific end user applications, making them an ideal match. Customers may choose to further optimize the differential pressure sensors using programmable features such as bandwidth and full scale pressure range.
These fully calibrated and temperature compensated differential pressure sensors offer vast improvements in usable output resolution while maintaining the industry’s highest level of overall accuracy and TEB performance, especially at very low differential pressures.
The proprietary NimbleSense™ architecture enables optimization of key application features, including pressure range, response times, power consumption, output interfaces and overall differential pressure sensor performance for a variety of applications including medical, air handling, VAV, air filter monitoring, DPT, and HVAC.
Applications
- Air flow measurement and control for industrial applications
- Performance, power and cost optimized
- Flexible solutions to meet varying pressure requirements
- Commercial filters for air cleaning, intake and recirculation
- Detection of contaminants and increased pressure losses
- Reliable, accurate and sensitive at multiple pressure ranges
- Air Handling, Variable Air Volume (VAV), Room Pressurization
- Consistent, reliable performance with low drift
- High accuracy at low pressure ranges
- Respiratory Care for Clinics, Homes and Hospitals
- Pulmonary Functional Testing (PFT) including Spirometry, FOT
- High speed measurements with very long product use cycles
- Highly accurate precisely compensated and calibrated
Markets
Commercial buildings are utilizing many advanced systems to monitor, regulate air flow for improved comfort, energy savings and healthier work environments
With decades of experience working with a wide variety of differential pressure sensors in medical applications, our technical and business teams are well equipped to understand customer application requirements and propose optimal pressure sensing solutions
Precision measurement of air flow provided by advanced differential pressure sensing solutions has become a core piece of next generation industrial instrumentation and measurement systems
Rapid Evaluation Testing
Evaluation Kits for Standalone Differential Pressure Sensors
Our product evaluation kits are very easy to use, leveraging a USB interface to plug into any standard computer with the software provided. These cost effective systems enable
- Rapid evaluation testing
- A socket is provided to quickly change target devices
- Excellent data logging capabilities to compare results
- Multi-use with various pin compatible differential pressure sensor family members
When choosing an evaluation system, the user first decides which family of products is most appropriate (HV, SP, etc). Next they select either the SPI or I2C interface.
Evaluation Kits for HS Series Differential Pressure Sensing Sub-Systems
The HS series evaluation kits are more encompassing. These evaluation
kits have been enhanced to provide a full system environment, with
software enabling modification of key parameters and functions to
optimize testing. Additionally, the HS series evaluation boards have
been designed as full production turnkey reference platforms; hardware
and software can be readily adapted to accelerate definition, design and
deployment of a new generation of DPT systems.
The Technology Behind Superior Sensor’s Differential Pressure Sensors
NimbleSense™ – The Superior Architecture for Sensing Pressure
Piezoresistive microelectromechanical (MEMS) pressure sensors combine piezoresistive sensing with MEMS design and processing to create one of the most dominant and useful pressure sensing/measuring techniques. Additional circuitry has always been required to make the sensor’s output useful for measurements or control. However, major enhancements to this core pressure sensing technique were required to create Superior Sensor Technology’s advanced pressure sensing system (APPS).
Piezoresistive MEMS Pressure Sensors
Piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensors are mass produced by etching or micromachining hundreds of thin pressure sensitive diaphragms (membranes) from a silicon wafer. Integrated circuit (IC) processing is used to form four piezoresistive (pressure sensitive resistor) sensors on the surface of the silicon wafer for each etched diaphragm creating an integrated piezoresistive pressure sensor. The design of the diaphragm and the piezoresistors, including their location and configuration, normally determines the useful range of the pressure sensor. Connecting the four resistors to form a Wheatstone bridge allows the measurement of very small changes in resistance due to the strain on the diaphragm and translate the changes into an output voltage. Three elements, the etched diaphragm, four piezoresistors and a Wheatstone bridge configuration, provide the basis or core of piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensors.
To make the piezoresistive MEMS pressure sensor useful and achieve the temperature stability, zero and full-scale calibration accuracy as well as the digital interface required in target applications, additional circuitry is required. This circuitry is commonly implemented at the sensor packaging level in many traditional sensors. Unfortunately, the traditional pressure sensor approach lacks the performance required for many demanding applications. This necessitates that customers add their own custom hardware and software to achieve their design goals. Superior Sensor Technology’s NimbleSense™ architecture
builds on the traditional pressure to provide a higher-performance, application-specific solution.
Superior Sensor Technology’s NimbleSense Architecture
Using the NimbleSense™ architecture allows highly differentiated advanced pressure sensing systems to be created from a design toolbox of technology building blocks, greatly improves system performance in the end application, while providing enhanced features and cost-optimized manufacturing solutions.
The NimbleSense™ architecture incorporates processing intelligence with signal path integration and proprietary algorithms to provide sensor sub-system integration and the highest sensor performance. Choosing from a smorgasbord of proven and tested building blocks, Superior Sensor Technology design experts integrate the appropriate blocks into a pressure sensor sub-system to achieve optimized performance for the customer’s application requirements.
These different pieces provide significant design flexibility to satisfy customer goals. With these highly-integrated subsystems, a user can quickly and easily develop the pressure sensing solution required in their specific end product by simply adding a few low-cost external components. The plethora of technology building blocks in the NimbleSense architecture enables a 5 to 10x performance increase as well as a variety of application-specific features.
Technology Building Block
- Advanced Digital Filtering
- Closed Loop Control
- Z-Track™ – Zero Error Reduction
- Multi-Range™
- 50/60Hz Notch Filter
- Proprietary Zero-Noise Suppression
Application examples enabled by the NimbleSense architecture’s building block approach include:
- HVAC DPT: Multi-Range, 50/60 Hz Notch Filter
- Spirometry: Z-Track, Proprietary Zero-Noise Suppression
- Air Quality: Advanced Digital Filtering, Closed Loop Control
- CPAP/BiPAP: Advanced Digital Filtering, Closed Loop Control
Multi-Range™ capability allows a single sensor device, calibrated and performance optimized from 25 Pa to 2500 Pa pressure ranges, to replace up to eight competitive sensors while maintaining 0.1% accuracy at each selected range. Z-Track methodology employs a proprietary algorithm to virtually eliminate zero drift in specific sensors. Self-Aware technology in these sensors detects when the pressure returns to zero, where Z-Track technology recaptures this new zero level for future measurements, virtually eliminating zero drift.
Starting Your Next Design with Superior Sensor Technology
To take advantage of the newest approach to pressure sensing systems technology for your next design, contact Superior Sensor Technology or ask your local distributor for contact information.
NimbleSense, Multi-Range, Z-Track and Self-Aware are trademarks of Superior Sensor Technology.
Customer Experience
Everything we do as a company must create value to our customers.
We ask ourselves the following questions:
- How do our Differential Pressure Sensors help our customers win additional business or increase their margins?
- Do our products enable our customers to add differentiated features to their systems?
- Are we great to work with? Do our customers value the interactions and find the provided information useful?
Customers should expect:
Expert initial contact – Deal immediately with our technically minded, experienced sales and application teams.
Global reach – Local support and global reach through our distribution and sales rep networks. Broad product offerings – Coverage of diverse
system requirements, handling a wide variety of industrial and medical applications.
Easy to evaluate – Products which are very easy to source and evaluate, with detailed technical literature and fast inquiry responses.
Outstanding application support – Including the ability to customize our product offerings, as needed, to increase the application fit and improve the customer’s overall system performance.
Long term focus – Not only do our products provide long-term, robust solutions, but our support extends over the many years needed to match lengthy system lifecycles.
Unique differentiated product roadmap – Increased sensor and system value, supporting our customers to develop new generations of systems with differential pressure sensor features and performance improvements.
Related Products
HV Series – Differential Pressure Sensor for Air Handling Applications
The industry’s first Differential Pressure Sensor solution optimized for Air Handling (HVAC, VAV, etc) solutions. With Multi-Range™ support a single HV device can replace up to 8 competing, single range devices while improving system performance at each range.
SP Series – Differential Pressure Sensor for Pulmonary Functional Testing (Spirometry, FOT, etc.)
This series of Differential Pressure Sensors offers not only industry leading performance, but also reliability and robustness compared to all digital and analog solutions. Additionally, we’ve added the industry’s best zero performance, leveraging our proprietary Z-Track™ technology, to virtually eliminate zero drift.
HS Series – Differential Pressure Transmitter Sub-System
This highly integrated hardware and software differential pressure sensing solution gives the customer the ultimate in flexibility and performance for their Differential Pressure Transmitter systems. Adding analog interfaces with easy to use configuration software, customers can now greatly accelerate their product definition and engineering development efforts while simplifying system calibration testing in manufacturing.