New Trends in Smart Sensors for Industrial Applications - Part I

In modern industry, productivity, quality, reliability, and safety heavily depend on the performance of the sensors employed. They form an interface between the production equipment and the surrounding environment providing feedback based on the results of the executed operations. Thus, sensors can be found in an extremely wide range of applications in industrial systems, in which they play a very important role. The first element in any control and measurement system is the sensor itself. Sensor performance defines the performance of the control/measurement system and that of the industrial system as a whole. It is not possible to distinguish between correct and incorrect information provided by a sensor, unless additional information provided by another sensor is used. This validates the statement: No machine can perform better than its sensors.