Olfactory Application Controller Integrated Circuit

摘要

An integrated circuit that senses ambient gas concentrations includes a microcontroller, gas sensors, heating resistors and an analog-to-digital converter. A first gas sensor measures a first attribute of a gas concentration, and a second gas sensor measures a second attribute of the gas concentration. The first attribute varies with the gas concentration differently than does the second attribute. The microcontroller controls the duty cycles of signals driven through the heating resistors to adjust the temperatures of the resistors, which are thermally coupled to the gas sensors. A first heating resistor increases the temperature of the first gas sensor to a first target temperature, and a second heating resistor increases the temperature of the second gas sensor to a second target temperature. The analog-to-digital converter converts the attributes measured by the first and second gas sensors into digital values. The microcontroller then uses the digital values to compute the gas concentration.

主权项

1. An integrated circuit, comprising:
a microcontroller; a nonvolatile memory; a set of at least two gas sensors, wherein the gas sensors are exposed to air, wherein each gas sensor has an attribute, wherein the attribute of each gas sensor has a different dependency on a gas concentration; a set of heating resistors, wherein each heating resistor is associated with an associated gas sensor, wherein each heating resistor raises the temperature of the associated gas sensor to a target temperature; an analog-to-digital converter operable to convert the attributes of the gas sensors into digital values, wherein the digital values corresponding to at least two gas sensors are used by the microcontroller to compute the gas concentration, wherein the at least two gas sensors are differentially sensitive to the gas concentration; and a communication circuit operable to communicate the gas concentration information out of the integrated circuit.