A Temperature Sensor using a Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) Timer for Very Wide Temperature Measurement

A temperature sensor based on a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) Timer was designed for extreme temperature applications. The sensor can operate under a wide temperature range from hot jet engine compartments to cryogenic space exploration missions. For example, in Jet Engine Distributed Control Architecture, the sensor must be able to operate at temperatures exceeding 150 C. For space missions, extremely low cryogenic temperatures need to be measured. The output of the sensor, which consisted of a stream of digitized pulses whose period was proportional to the sensed temperature, can be interfaced with a controller or a computer. The data acquisition system would then give a direct readout of the temperature through the use of a look-up table, a built-in algorithm, or a mathematical model. Because of the wide range of temperature measurement and because the sensor is made of carefully selected COTS parts, this work is directly applicable to the NASA Fundamental Aeronautics/Subsonic Fixed Wing Program--Jet Engine Distributed Engine Control Task and to the NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) Program. In the past, a temperature sensor was designed and built using an SOI operational amplifier, and a report was issued. This work used an SOI 555 timer as its core and is completely new work.