Analysis of the future development direction of sensor technology

As the society's awareness of environmental protection increases, sensors are an indispensable key component in the process of environmental protection, and their related industrial status is increasing year by year in my country. Today, with the continuous deepening of environmental governance and the rising tide of environmental protection, domestic and foreign sensor companies have entered the field of environmental protection one after another, and the environmental monitoring sensor market is just around the corner.

1. Sensor materials and device technologies and their characteristics

From a technical point of view, sensors refer to basic functional devices with information acquisition functions, mainly including: photoelectric, infrared, force-sensitive, biological and other sensors. Sensor materials refer to functional materials that reflect highly sensitive responses to small changes in signals such as sound, light, electricity, magnetism, and heat, as well as structural materials required to manufacture sensors, including semiconductors, metals, and composite materials.

Sensor technology and its industry have the characteristics of technology-intensive, multi-technology collaboration, strong industry penetration, high cross-border integration, and low industrial concentration; sensor products have many varieties, small batches, complex structures, scattered technical indicators, and large parameter spans. , high precision requirements, wide application fields, etc.; sensor materials and devices have the characteristics of consistency and stability, as well as technical basics and synergy requirements.

In the field of sensor technology, my country is limited by the overall development level, technical strength, talent accumulation and other factors, and has formed a "generation gap" with Europe and the United States and other countries, and it is particularly urgent for my country to catch up with sensor technology.

2. The future development direction of sensor technology

With the development of a new generation of information technology, the field of environmental monitoring has put forward new requirements and challenges for sensor equipment. Specifically, the new generation of environmental monitoring equipment needs to develop in the following directions:

1. Zero power consumption

In a huge IoT sensor node, it is not practical to replace the battery every few months. The "zero power consumption" sensor can usually completely shut down the matching circuit, communication and other systems, and can maintain sensitivity to external stimuli without consuming power itself. When receiving external changes "events" (such as vehicle passing, harmful gas leakage, the appearance of a specific spectrum, etc.), the back-end circuits are turned on to achieve true "zero power consumption" environmental monitoring.

2. Wireless on-demand connection

Another major energy consumption of IoT wireless sensor nodes comes from wireless communication. Therefore, using new materials and devices to achieve wireless on-demand connection, usually completely shutting down the entire communication system, and successfully awakening when needed, is an important direction for the development of wireless sensors in the future.

3. Multidimensional information integration

That is to say, the development can measure multiple parameters of a single application scenario at the same time, process the collected multi-dimensional data through edge computing and other methods, and output results that are strongly related to the application scenario. It has the characteristics of multi-sensor fusion and system integration. It can realize the ability of a single sensor to perceive multi-dimensional information, realize the integration of computing, storage and transmission at the edge of the sensing terminal, improve the adaptability to application scenarios and environments, and improve reliability.

4. Network protocols and integration

In the future, sensors need to be built on a unified material process platform to form a collaborative design of sensors, which can be processed at one time through a unified material platform. It is also compatible with the existing CMOS process, forming a single-chip integration of multiple sensors and multiple signal reading circuits with network protocol, which greatly improves the integration of the sensor.

5. Sensors for special applications

Including physiological signal acquisition sensors for special environments, and sensors with characteristics of transparency, flexibility, extension, bendability, and wearability for special applications.

6. Multi-sensing sensor

Sensors have been extended from the perception of single-dimensional physical quantities such as force, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism to new types of perception functions such as gas, liquid, and infrared information. In the future, there will be heat, pain, humidity, touch, etc. perceptual sensor.

7. Intelligent

It integrates various sensing functions with data processing, storage, two-way communication and other functions, and realizes the automatic control, automatic detection, automatic analysis, automatic diagnosis and other functions of the sensor in whole or in part. Another direction of intelligence is soft sensing technology, that is, the combination of intelligent sensors and artificial intelligence.