A controlled-temperature hot-wire anemometer

with voltage feedback linearization

L. V. Araujo, S. Y. C. Catunda, C. E. T. Drea
Department of Computer Engineering and Automation,
UFRN
Natal, RN, Brazil
leonardovale@dca.ufrn.br, catundaz@gmail.com,
cetdorea@dca.ufrn.br
R. C. S. Freire
Engineering Electronic Department, UFCG
Campina Grande, PB, Brazil
rcsfreire@dee.ufcg.edu.br


AbstractThis paper proposes a new architecture of a
controlled-temperature hot-wire anemometer using voltage
feedback linearization. The voltage feedback linearizes the sensor
input-output relationship and the controller is designed to
achieve null steady-state error and reduce the system response
time. Analysis of the behavior of the architecture modeled using
Simulink is presented for a NTC sensor. Simulation results are
presented and discussed, and the architecture is compared with
the classical constant-temperature anemometer (CTA) one.
KeywordsHot-wire anemometer; thermoresistive sensor;
feedback linearization; constant temperature; controller
I. INTRODUCTION
Measurement systems that use thermoresistive sensors have
the capability to exploit the variation of the electrical resistance
as function of sensor temperature [1]. These systems can be
used to measure temperature, incident radiation and fluid
velocity [2].
Hot-wire anemometers are used for measuring fluid
velocity and are usually implemented using architectures that
maintain constant the sensor temperature (CTA, constant
temperature anemometer) [3]. These anemometers can use
thermoresistive sensors of PTC (Positive Temperature
Coefficient) or NTC (Negative Temperature Coefficient) type.
In the CTA architecture, the sensor is heated by an
electrical current, due to the Joule effect, up to a reference
temperature [4]. The temperature is kept constant through the
use of feedback control, which compensates the thermal
variations and reduces the system response time. In the
classical CTA architecture, the control function is implemented
as a high gain proportional controller and it is carried on by an
operational amplifier, using a Wheatstone bridge configuration,
as shown in Fig. 1. The thermoresistive sensor is placed in one
arm of the bridge and the other operates with fixed resistances.
Any disturbance in the thermal balance causes a variation in
sensor temperature, changing sensor resistance and making the
bridge unbalanced. In this case, the operational amplifier acts
varying its output voltage, compensating variations on the
sensor temperature, making the temperature almost constant
[5].

Fig. 1. Schematic of constant temperature anemometer architecture with
Wheatstone bridge.
One of main difficulties in designing controlled-
temperature anemometers is that of the design of the feedback
control, due to the nonlinear relationship between the applied
voltage or current and the temperature response. This difficulty
can be also observed for the CTA configuration, which, in
some cases, can lead the system to take long time to stabilize or
even become instable [6].
With the availability of low-cost microcontrollers, it is
possible to digitally implement the anemometer temperature
control system [7]. Contrasting with the analog architecture,
with a digital system it is easier to explore diverse feedback
control strategies. One strategy, to avoid the possible problems
related to the sensor nonlinear behavior, is to employ
linearization through voltage feedback [1].
This paper proposes an architecture of a hot-wire
anemometer which performs the linearization of the
thermoresistive sensor transfer function through output voltage
feedback. Analysis of the behavior of the proposed architecture
modeled using Simulink is presented for a NTC sensor.
Simulation results are presented and discussed, and the
architecture is compared with the classical constant
temperature anemometer (CTA) one.
II. THEORETICAL REVIEW
Thermoresistive sensors can be classified as PTC or NTC.
PTC sensors increase their resistance with the temperature. For
a metallic PTC, the relation between these quantities is given
by:

0
(1 )
S S
R R T +
(1)
where R
0
is the resistance of the sensor to 0 C and is the
coefficient of temperature.
NTC sensors work inversely, i.e., decreasing their
resistance with the increase of the temperature. The equation of
this sensor is given by the simplified Steinhart-Hart model
using only a temperature coefficient:

inf

K
S
B
T
R R e (2)
where R
inf
is the resistance of the sensor considering a
temperature tending to infinite and T
K
is the temperature in
Kelvin.
Apart from the temperature coefficient characteristic of the
sensor, the first law of thermodynamics can be employed to
express the sensor thermal balance. For applications in
anemometry, the sensor should be in the form of a very thin
wire to prevent the absorption of energy by incident radiation
[2]. Excluding the effect of incident radiation, the sensor
thermal balance can be written as:

( )
2

S
e S S S a
dT
P R I hS T T mc
dt
= = +
(3)
where P
e
and I
S
are the electric power and current of the sensor,
respectively, T
a
is the ambient temperature and h is the heat
transfer coefficient on the sensor surface. The sensor
parameters are: the mass m, the specific heat c, and area S. In
these instruments the value of h is not constant and is given by
Kings equation:

n
h a b = + (4)
where a, b e n are constants which can be experimentally
determined and is the fluid velocity.
The equations (2-4) constitute the NTC sensor model as it
can be represented in Fig. 2. The inputs of this model are the
current through to the sensor, the fluid velocity and the ambient
temperature. The outputs are the sensor temperature and
voltage.

Fig. 2. Block diagram model of the NTC sensor.
III. WB-CTA ARCHITECTURE
Traditional methods of measurement used in hot-wire
anemometers are to maintain the voltage (CV), current (CCA)
or temperature (CTA) constant [3]. The architecture proposed
in this paper carries the control of the sensor temperature
making it constant. Thus, it is important to show a comparison
between the performance of the proposed and a consolidated
architecture. To conduct this comparative analysis, the WB-
CTA architecture was chosen because it is fairly consolidated
and present advantages such as reduced time constant, good
sensitivity and accuracy.
The WB-CTA architecture typically uses a thermoresistive
sensor in a Wheatstone bridge driven by an operational
amplifier. Fig. 3 shows the schematic diagram of the
architecture using a NTC sensor placed in the Wheatstone
bridge connected to the operational amplifier positive input. If
the PTC sensor is to be used it would be placed in the other
arm of the bridge.

Fig. 3. Esquematic diagram of the WB-CTA architecture using NTC
thermoresistive sensor.
The principle of operation of the architecture is as follows:
The operational amplifier negative feedback aims to maintain
the Wheatstone bridge balanced and, hence, the sensor
temperature approximately constant. Any variations in the
measurand, fluid velocity in this case, will tend to unbalance
the bridge, causing the operational amplifier to vary its output
to change the electric power dissipated by the thermoresistive
sensor, returning the bridge to balance.
Analyzing the circuit, the output voltage of the operational
amplifier, considering the input offset voltage, is given by:
( )
o S OS
V A V V V

= + (5)
where V
S
is the voltage on the sensor and V
-
is the voltage at
the inverting input. Moreover, in order to simplify the final
equation, a parameter that relates two fixed resistors of the
circuit is introduced. This parameter K is given by:

3 2
3

R R
K
R
+
=
(6)
From equations (3-6) it is possible to obtain an expression
of the output voltage of the operational amplifier:

( )( )
n S
O S f S A OS
dT AK
V R S a b T T mc V
A K dt

| |
| |
= + + + |
|
|
+
\
\
(7)
It is possible to simplify (7) considering the gain, A, much
greater than the parameter K. Furthermore, if the offset voltage,
V
OS
, is small and can be disregarded, the simplified expression
for reconstruction the fluid velocity can be found as:

1
2

( )
n
O
f
S S A
V
a K
bSR T T b

| |
| |
|
|
\
|
=
|

|
\
(8)
The WB-CTA architecture was simulated using Matlab and
Simulink, using the parameters shown in Table 1.
TABLE I. PARAMETERS OF WB-CTA ARCHITECTURE
Parameters Values
A 100.000
VOS 1 mV
R1 500
K 3.5

Fig. 4 shows the behavior of the temperature sensor, in
steady state, as a function of the fluid velocity. It can be seen
that this architecture presents a small variation in temperature
with increasing the fluid velocity.

Fig. 4. Temperature sensor as a function of fluid velocity.
Fig. 5 and 6 show the dynamic behavior of the output
voltage, for two values of offset voltage 1 mV and 10 mV,
respectively, considering a step variation on the fluid velocity,
from 0 to 25 m/s, applied at time instant zero. It is possible to
observe that the value of the operational amplifier input offset
voltage influences the system behavior and performance
strongly.


Fig. 5. WB-CTA output voltage as function of time for an step variation of
the fluid velocity, with VOS = 1 mV.

Fig. 6. WB-CTA output voltage as function of time for an step variation of
the fluid velocity, with VOS = 10 mV.
The fluid velocity was estimated from (8) and it is shown in
Fig. 7, for the operational amplifier input offset voltage of 1
mV and for the same fluid velocity step. The settling time
(using 2% criterion) obtained for this case was 42.73 ms and
the percent overshoot 659.51%.

Fig. 7. Reconstruction of fluid velocity in WB-CTA architecture.
The proposed architecture aims to avoid these unwanted
behaviors and obtain a better performance for estimating the
fluid velocity.
IV. FEEDBACK LINEARIZATION
Equation (3) presented in section II shows that the
relationship between the electric current and the temperature of
the NTC sensor is nonlinear. On the other hand, the
relationship between the electrical power and the temperature
is linear. To make it possible to employ electrical power as the
controlling variable, the architecture presented in Fig. 8 is
considered.


Fig. 8. Feedback linearization configuration of the system with electrical
power as input.
Applying the Laplace transform in (3) the transfer function
can be written as:

1
( )
( ) 1
th
e
G T s
P s s

=
+
(9)
where
( ) ( )
S a
T s T s T

=
, is the time constant which is given
by
th
th
C
G
, C
th
and G
th
are the thermal capacitance and the thermal
conductance, respectively. The thermal capacitance is
calculated by the product mc and thermal conductance by the
product hS.
This configuration makes linear the relationship between
the input and output signal of the sensor system, which makes
it possible to apply conventional control techniques in order to
improve system performance.
V. PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
The proposed architecture is shown in Fig. 9. For the sensor
to operate at a heated temperature, the input signal is a
reference temperature. A comparison between reference and
sensor temperatures is made producing an error signal, which is
the input of the controller. The controller generates a power
signal output that is converted to a current signal by voltage
feedback, making complete feedback control system linear.

Fig. 9. Proposed architecture.
In order simulate the proposed architecture, the parameters
of a commercial sensor were used, and are shown in Table 2.


TABLE II. PARAMETERS OF COMMERCIAL SENSORS
Parameters Values
Rinf 0.0265
B 3068 K
Cth 7 J/K
Gth 4.28410
-4
W/K
a 2375 W/m.K
b 976 W.s
0.5
/m
2.5
.K
n 0.5

For the design of the controller, the requirements of
simplicity, zero steady-state error and low system response
time were considered. Thus, a comparison between
proportional (P) and proportional-integral (PI) controllers is
carried out to verify their adequacy to these requirements. The
transfer function of P controller is given by:

( )
P th P
C s G K =
(10)
The transfer function of the PI controller can be written as:

( )
I
PI th P
K
C s G K
s
| |
= +
|
\
(11)
The transfer function in open loop is given by:

( )
2

1

P I
P
P I
K K
s
K
G s
K K
s s

| |
+
|
\
=
+ | |
+ +
|
\
(12)
where
1
2
P
n
K

+ | |
=
|
\
and
2

I
n
K

=
. The damping
coefficient and natural frequency
n
were chosen to achieve a
system time response of 5 ms, with 2% criterion. In Table 3
these values and gains of P and PI controller are presented.
TABLE III. PARAMETERS OF CONTROLLER AND SPECIFICATIONS CHOSEN
Parameters Values
1

800

25.08

10432

Similar to what was developed for the WB-CTA
architecture is necessary to obtain an expression that estimates
the behavior of the fluid velocity to the proposed architecture.
Through equation (3), the fluid velocity is given by:

1
n
e
S A
f
P
a
T T
b

(
(
(
(
(

| |

\
(

=
(13)
To simulate the proposed architecture, the reference
temperature of 100 C was considered. The fluid velocity step
of 0 m/s to 25 m/s was applied at time instant zero. Fig. 10 and
11 shows the power signal at the controller output and current
signal at the input of the sensor, respectively, for both
controllers.

Fig. 10. Power signal generated.

Fig. 11. Input current signal of the sensor .
Figure 12 shows the behavior of output temperature of the
sensor for both controllers. The PI controller presents a zero
steady-state error when the fluid velocity step is applied. The
system response time, to reach 2% of the final value, was
found about 2.46 ms as expected.


Fig. 12. Temperature response for both controllers.
From equation (14) it was possible to estimate the fluid
velocity. In Figure 13 it is possible to observe this behavior, in
which is again applied a step of 25 m/s. The settling time and
the percent overshoot obtained were 7.95 ms and 28.71%
respectively.

Fig. 13. Reconstruction of fluid velocity in proposed architecture.
VI. CONCLUSION
This paper presented an architecture of a controlled-
temperature hot-wire anemometer using thermoresistive
sensors that performs a linearization of the transfer function
through a feedback output voltage. Furthermore, a control
system was designed for the architecture to ensure that steady-
state error is zero and low system response time. The proposed
architecture was compared to the classical Wheatstone Bridge
Constant Temperature Anemometer (WB-CTA).
Through simulations, it was possible to verify that the WB-
CTA architecture has a rapid response but cannot keep the
temperature constant as noted. Moreover, it was also found that
it performance, in terms of response to a fast measurand
variation, is strongly influenced by the operational amplifier
input offset voltage.
The proposed architecture has shown it can maintain a
constant temperature in the sensor due to use of a PI controller
and it has a better response performance for a rapid variation of
the fluid velocity when compared to the classical architecture.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Federal University of
Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), CAPES e CNPq for the
financial support and all colleagues for the technical support.


0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
0
20
40
60
80
Time (s)
P
o
w
e
r

(
m
W
)


P controller
PI controller
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
10
15
20
25
Time (s)
C
u
r
r
e
n
t

(
m
A
)


P controller
PI controller
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
94
96
98
100
102
104
Time (s)
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
e

(

C
)


P controller
PI controller
Reference
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