| 摘要 |
<p>A semiconductor sensor has piezo resistor elements (11g, 11h, 11i, 11j) formed in deformable semiconductor portions for forming a Wheatstone bridge circuit (12), and a fault detecting circuit (14) is associated with the Wheatstone bridge circuit for producing a warning signal indicative of the occurrence of a fault in the Wheatstone bridge circuit. The fault detecting circuit has two window comparators (14a,14b; 14c,14d) independently monitoring two output nodes (Ps1,Ps2) of the Wheatstone bridge circuit to see whether or not the voltage level at each of the output nodes ranges between the upper limit and the lower limit of a normal voltage range, so that destruction of one of the piezo resistor elements is detectable. The outputs of the window comparators are combined to provide a fault signal output (MNT). <IMAGE></p> |
