Remote sensing of position and acceleration

Acceleration and position transducers are one of the most widely used sensors for monitoring civil engineering structures, mechanical devices, industrial process systems and even biomedical systems. One of the main issue in designing instrumentation with such sensors is the ability of remote interaction in order to reduce as much is possible any interference with the measured physical value. This statement usually implies the use of low power embedded systems for acceleration and position sensing and wireless data transfer for acquiring relevant readings. This paper proposes a low power embedded sensing system for acceleration and position based on a common capacitive transducer. The system integrates in one single chip the signal conditioning blocks (for the transducers), the analog-to-digital converter and a fast infrared communication module for data transmission. The proposed solution increases the possibility of integrating arrays of such low-cost sensors in remote sensing network systems for acceleration and position, allowing an increased accuracy and performance for all interested domains of application.