Redundant combinatory readout
AssigneeMelexis Technologies SA
InventorsJavier BILBAO DE MENDIZABAL, Mathieu POEZART
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Abstract
The present invention relates to a sensor device comprising four or more sensor elements. A controller comprising a control circuit controls the sensor elements to measure an environment attribute, produces more than two values corresponding to the measurement and compares the values to determine a fault. The more than two values are obtained by different combinations of sensor elements that have at least one sensor element in common and one sensor element that is not in common. The values can be measured in different coordinate systems and the control circuit can convert the field vectors into a common coordinate system.
Claims15
A sensor device, comprising:
- four or more sensor elements;
- and
- a controller comprising a control circuit arranged to control said four or more sensor elements to measure an environmental attribute and arranged to produce two or more values related to said environmental attribute and to compare said two or more values to determine a fault,
- wherein each value is obtained from a set of said four or more sensor elements and each set includes at least one same sensor element, and
- wherein each set includes at least one different sensor element not included in the other sets or the sets are arranged to measure said environmental attribute in different orientations, or both.
A method of operating a sensor device as in any of the previous claims, comprising:
- using said control circuit to measure an environmental attribute with said sensor elements,
- combining the sensor element measurements to produce more than two values representing said environmental attribute, and
- comparing said values to determine a single correct value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.