Artículos de revistas
A New Method of Current Switching for Linear Wide-Range Measurement Systems
Fecha
2013-08-02Registro en:
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, PISCATAWAY, v. 61, n. 2, supl. 4, Part 1, pp. 496-504, FEB, 2012
0018-9456
10.1109/TIM.2011.2169181
Autor
Pontes, Eduardo Winston
Ferreira, Ademar
Institución
Resumen
This new and general method here called overflow current switching allows a fast, continuous, and smooth transition between scales in wide-range current measurement systems, like electrometers. This is achieved, using a hydraulic analogy, by diverting only the overflow current, such that no slow element is forced to change its state during the switching. As a result, this approach practically eliminates the long dead time in low-current (picoamperes) switching. Similar to a logarithmic scale, a composition of n adjacent linear scales, like a segmented ruler, measures the current. The use of a linear wide-range system based on this technique assures fast and continuous measurement in the entire range, without blind regions during transitions and still holding suitable accuracy for many applications. A full mathematical development of the method is given. Several computer realistic simulations demonstrated the viability of the technique.