Compensation

Pressure-sensor compensation is challenging and costly. It requires specialized equipment and expertise. Perhaps most important, it is time consuming. Each sensor needs to be calibrated individually, and the equipment takes a long time to reach the required temperatures for calibration.

When signal conditioning is used to compensate for a sensor’s non-ideal output, the sensor is considered fully compensated. When laser-trimming technology is used to change a sensor’s resistor properties and performance, the sensor is considered passively compensated. And when a sensor comprises nothing more than a MEMS die bonded on a ceramic substrate and wire bonded to the metal traces on the ceramic but has no signal conditioning and no laser-trimmed resistors, the sensor is uncompensated.

The application in which a pressure sensor is used often determines whether the customer needs the sensor to be fully compensated, passively compensated, or uncompensated.