• magnetic field sensing

Electronic Integrated Circuits (ICs) are an important pillar of the automotive market, especially since legal and safety requirements have been introduced to manage vehicles emissions and behaviors. Furthermore, the harsh environment and the tight safety requirements, added to the market that is pushing to reduce development lead time and to increase system complexity, have required the development of dedicated ICs for the automotive applications.
This thesis, developed in the ams Italy (Navacchio) design center, deals with the Modelling, Simulation and Design of the digital signal processing system included in a 3D Hall effect sensor IC.
ams is one of the world leading companies involved in research and development of innovative Hall ICs, especially focusing on contactless automotive and industrial applications.
A 3D Hall IC is a complex system capable to measure the three magnetic field components of a moving magnet and to process the information so as to obtain the spherical components representation of the field or the two Joystick angles and the magnet linearized position. The thesis has two main goals.
The first is the creation of a theoretical model to characterize an ams 3D Hall Core processing system from the behavioural point of view and to identify possible weaknesses and inefficiencies. The second is the design of an optimized implementation with respect to the state of the art, aiming to consistently reduce system complexity without affecting precision.
The thesis work starts with an investigation of commercial architectures and the development of a model needed to study system performance and precision. During the thesis dissertation, the criteria that have led to the formulation of the model are shown and simulation results are examined in detail. At a later stage, the new system architecture is introduced
and the single implemented modules are presented, pointing out the differences with respect to the previous solution.
Finally a comparison between the two solutions is carried out, highlighting the main improvements achieved.