As a front-tier device of an IoT (Internet of Things) system, sensor plays a crucial role in data collection and transmission to determine the performance of the system, and the rapid development of IoT applications can stimulate the advancement of sensor technologies to meet specific application needs, according to Daniel Lee, country manager for Taiwan at Austria chipmaker AMS, a global leader in designing and manufacturing advanced sensor solutions and analog ICs and mainly known as a supplier of sensors for Apple's iPhones.

Besides sensing technology advancements, Lee opined, external structures of sensors must also undergo constant improvements to eliminate undesirable interferences among different sensors built in the same system to simultaneously perform different sensing functions, which will pose a major challenge to sensor makers.

Lee said IoT applications are now mainly seen in specific vertical industries such as healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, and construction, which entail different functional needs and therefore show specific requirements for components, modules and equipment associated with IoT systems.

A national land monitoring system, for instance, must see special designs in power consumption and hardware sturdiness as its sensors have to be installed outdoors for a long time. For sensors built in smart home devices, a small-size design will be more required than power consumption. Usually, such application fields as manufacturing, healthcare and power supply require special sensor specs, according to Lee.

IIoT applications

In terms of industrial IoT (IIoT), sensing and FRID (radio frequency identification) are among crucial technologies for the whole system, as they are required to catch related data from the real world before the data can be analyzed and synthesized with the assistance of AI to work out optimal production decisions. In this aspect, Lee indicated, sensors featuring embedded computing solutions have been rolled out to support advanced sensing, predictive analysis and high-speed processing capability in IIoT applications.

Another application focus of sensors for smart manufacturing plants lies in machine vision mainly used in production process and requiring high image resolution. In this space, CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) image sensors are replacing CCD (charge coupled device) ones as the mainstream for machine vision, and leading sensor makers have since 2017 gradually cut production of CCD sensors to focus more on the development and production of CMOS sensors with ever-improving resolution. But CCD sensors can still perform well in astronomy, low luminance and dynamic photography applications, according to Lee.

On another front, Lee continued, sensors are applied to the healthcare system to detect multiple physiological signals of patients in two ways. One is using the same sensing principle to detect a variety of physiological indicators, and the other is detecting the same indicator through multiple sensing methods. Constant upgrades in sensing technologies have made it easier to get accurate physiological data, and smart healthcare vision will be materialized at an accelerated pace with assistance of AI-powered computing and analysis capabilities.

3D sensing

Moreover, 3D sensing technology can also be well applied to various fields. 3D sensors are now mainly used for facial recognition, replacing touch ID for smartphone unlocking and mobile payment. Besides smartphones, long-range outdoor cameras, short-range VR (virtual reality) glasses, and low-luminance face recognition inside cars are the areas with great application potentials for 3D sensors, Lee noted.

Currently, 3D sensing involves structured light and TOF (time of flight) technologies, and VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) is the core light source of both technologies. High-power VCSEL can be applied to conduct deep-sensing data collection, including IoT environments.

Lee concluded that IoT-driven sensing technology evolutions are still under way, and the sensor market has advanced from price competition to quality competition as IoT systems are mainly established to generate aggregate values of the systems.

By: DocMemory
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