温度传感器毕业论文中英文资料外文翻译文献(3)

thermistors and silicon temperature sensors continue to enjoy popularity due to low cost and convenience of use in many situations.

Digital I/O Temperature Sensors

About five years ago, a new type of temperature sensor was introduced. These devices

include a digital interface that permits communication with a microcontroller. The interface is usually an I²C or SMBus serial bus, but other serial interfaces such as SPI are common. In addition to reporting temperature readings to the microcontroller, the interface also receives instructions from the microcontroller. Those instructions are often temperature limits, which, if exceeded, activate a digital signal on the temperature sensor IC that interrupts the microcontroller. The microcontroller is then able to adjust fan speed or back off the speed of a microprocessor, for example, to keep temperature under control.

This type of device is available with a wide variety of features, among them, remote

temperature sensing. To enable remote sensing, most high-performance CPUs include an on-chip transistor that provides a voltage analog of the temperature. (Only one of the transistor's two p-n junctions is used.) Figure 3 shows a remote CPU being monitored using this technique. Other applications utilize a discrete transistor to perform the same function.

Figure 3. A user-programmable temperature sensor monitors the temperature of a remote CPU's on-chip p-n junction.

Another important feature found on some of these types of sensors (including the sensor shown in Figure 3) is the ability to interrupt a microcontroller when the measured temperature falls outside a range bounded by high and low limits. On other sensors, an interrupt is generated when the measured temperature exceeds either a high or a low temperature threshold (i.e., not both). For the sensor in Figure 3, those limits are transmitted to the temperature sensor via the SMBus interface. If the temperature moves above or below the circumscribed range, the alert signal interrupts the processor.

Pictured in Figure 4 is a similar device. Instead of monitoring one p-n junction, however, it monitors four junctions and its own internal temperature. Because Maxim's MAX1668 consumes a small amount of power, its internal temperature is close to the ambient temperature. Measuring the ambient temperature gives an indication as to whether or not the system fan is operating properly.