微机电系统在个人和消费电子领域的应用

　　微机电系统在个人和消费电子领域的应用

　　收集传感器数据相对简单；分析数据并在复杂的消费者或医疗应用程序中使用它不是。本文讨论了在一个复杂系统中引入一个简单传感器时所遇到的一些挑战。

　　基于MEMS（微机电系统）技术的传感器精确跟踪运动的能力已经完全改变了健康和健身市场。MEMS技术是一种自然适合监测健身，因为它可以嵌入在鞋和服装跟踪性能。然而，令许多公司感到惊讶的是，MEMS技术可以带来重大而独特的价值的利基应用数量。例如，MEMS可以用来检测一个家里的老人是否已经倒下，不能起床或完全停止移动。在这两种情况下，个人监视器都可以通过射频链路请求帮助。

　　MEMS传感器技术也迅速成为便携式和手持消费电子设备的预期功能，考虑到它可以提高可用性的方法。例如，感知倾斜、旋转和手势的能力正成为游戏外围设备的标准功能。便携式设备使用MEMS来确定显示文本和图像的方向，以便用户可以从正确的角度查看它们。可以使用诸如航位推算等高级功能来提供本地GPS功能。

　　Historically， MEMS devices have been quite expensive. However， higher sales volumes continue to drive down cost， making them viable within even lower-cost systems. As a result， MEMS technology is being introduced for use in a wide variety of personal electronics applications， including medical monitors， training equipment， and PDAs/handsets.

　　One of the barriers to the rapid adoption of a technology is the ease with which developers can evaluate and design with the components based on that technology. Technologies that are difficult to work with， either because they only are available in a surface-mounted package or do not have available drivers or software， are less likely to be considered for serious evaluation. On the whole， MEMS devices are simple sensors. They come in small， standard packages， which make them easy to work with， and they are available with analog or digital interfaces. As the digital interfaces are typically I²C or SPI， any MCU can interface to them.

　　The primary challenges engineers face when designing with MEMS is not being able to integrate the sensor into a system or collect data. The first challenge is dealing with the potential software complexity associated with analyzing captured data. The second is correlating MEMS data with data from other sensors in the system. The third is being able to evaluate and develop MEMS technology under real-world operating conditions.