Design of a Novel Power Current Micro-Sensor for Traction Power Supply Using Two Hall ICs

This research applied the integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing technology to develop a new power current microsensor to replace CTs and save space in railway train sets. Two small pieces of IC chips are attached to a power cable to measure the current flowing in the cable. Measurement results show that the new power current micro-sensor can perform the same function of a CT without running into saturation problems no matter whether the cable is straight or not. Under this method, the two Hall voltages produced by the two Hall ICs will compensate for each other to raise the accuracies of the power current micro-sensors without cores in a non-straight conducting cable. According to the measuring framework developed by this study, based on LabVIEW, a series of waveforms generated by the newly designed power current micro-sensors are compared with those of traditional CTs and linear CTs. Satisfactory results show the feasibility of improving the power current micro-sensor with the new design.