Handbook of Modern Sensors

Numerous computerized appliances wash clothes, prepare coffee, play music, guard homes, and perform endless useful functions. However, no electronic device operates without receiving external information. Even if such information comes from another electronic device, somewhere in the chain, there is at least one component that perceives external input signals. This component is a sensor. Modern signal processors are the devices that manipulate binary codes generally represented by electric impulses. As we live in an analog world that mostly is not digital or electrical (apart from the atomic level), sensors are the interface devices between various physical values and the electronic circuits that “understand” only the language of moving electrical charges. In other words, sensors are eyes, ears, and noses of the silicon chips. This book is about the man-made sensors that are very much different from the sensing organs of living organisms.