In the field of „digital living“, the detection of local characteristics, such as light conditions in every corner of the room, temperature and air flow at every window for ventilation control, etc., is necessary to enable automatic and intelligent control for room climate optimization, heating cost savings, health detection, etc. The integration of several hundred sensors is one of the biggest challenges. Today, these are mainly built on PCBs using standard components, which leads to large dimensions and high energy consumption.
Therefore, the goal of this project is to investigate highly integrated MEMS-based sensors for „digital living“ to compensate for these shortcomings. As an example application, an intelligent pressure sensor will be used to control the ventilation of the room by evaluating the collected data in order to optimize the indoor climate and heating costs. Three components need to be developed for a corresponding prototype: A MEMS pressure sensor, a high-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADU) and a digital computing unit for signal processing. Through a modular and flexible design of the individual components, a framework for the design of intelligent sensors is to be developed, similar to a modular system.