onsemi’s new approach to inductive position sensing speeds up time-to-market

While the features of inductive encoders make them very appealing for industrial applications, they have historically been limited to use cases that do not require a high degree of accuracy and operate with low rotational speed. With the NCS32100, onsemi leveraged its 20+ years of expertise designing inductive sensors to combine the reliable benefits of inductive encoders with the accuracy and speed generally associated with mid- to high-end optical encoders. Using a 38mm sensor, the device delivers +/-50 arcsec accuracy at 6,000 RPM. The NCS32100 can support speeds up to 100,000 RPM with reduced accuracy.

“The NCS32100 features firmware that directly outputs absolute position and velocity preloaded in its integrated microcontroller (MCU) providing an easy ‘plug and play’ solution,” said Michel De Mey, Vice President of the Industrial Solutions Division, onsemi. “The level of integration the NCS32100 offers can significantly reduce design time and the number of external components needed, allowing for faster time to market and more compact and efficient design.”

Inductive sensors have several key features that make them desirable for industrial applications including low sensitivity to almost all forms of contamination or interference, robustness against mechanical vibration, and no first-order temperature dependence.

The NCS32100 device also features an integrated calibration routine to account for mechanical misalignment in the sensor. High levels of configurability enable use with a wide range of printed circuit board (PCB) sensor designs, giving OEMs the ability to configure and differentiate their solutions. The NCS32100 offers a full featured controller and sensor interface for high resolution high accuracy angular sensing when paired with a printed circuit board sensor.

The integrated MCU includes non-volatile flash memory (NVM) and a configurable interface for communication with the host processor. The flexible configuration capabilities allow for connection to a variety of inductive sensor patterns and offers a variety of digital output formats.

Reference designs and evaluation boards are available to further accelerate the design process for industrial applications.

Summary of the key benefits of the NCS32100:

• Highly differentiated performance

−     +/- 50 arcsec accuracy or better

−     High Accuracy (+/- 50 arcsec) at High Speed (6,000 RPM)

• Simple and easy to use: the heavy lifting is already done

−     Integrated MCU, firmware included, outputs position and velocity instead of raw analog signal from which position must be derived

• Flexible mechanical specifications (+/- 0.25mm alignment)​

−     Integrated calibration that accounts for mechanical errors

−     Get +/-50 arcsec accuracy with up to 0.25mm misalignments (e.g., airgap, tilt)

• Highly configurable product

−     Allows part to work with different sized PCB sensor designs

−     Customers can differentiate through PCB sensor designs

There is also a range of options features with the NCS32100:

• Sensor configuration

−     NCS32100 can be configured to work with many different sensor designs and patterns

• Latency extrapolation

−     NCS32100 can be configured to negate system latencies by using extrapolation filters

• Low pass filtering

−     Options for filtering position and velocity outputs with 16, 32, 64, or 128 coefficients

• Open coil detect

−     NCD32100 can be configured to check for unintended breaks in the sensor coils

• Position auto zero

−     User can reset the absolute position index to any position desired

The NCS32100 is available now through onsemi sales support and authorised distributors.

Click here to download further information