Patent ID: 9239981
Filing Date: 2016-01-19
CPC Classification: G01V,G06K

Claim Text:
1. A method for acquisition and conditioning of signals from external sensors by an RFID active smart label (ASL) by a sensor-front-end processor (SFEP) processing sensor signals and a microcontroller (MC), which are integrated in said label, wherein the sensor-front-end processor (SFEP) predrives external sensors during a predominant part of time with low-intensity electric currents in an order of magnitude of ten nanoamperes and at the same time it is in a low-consumption state consuming electric current with intensity below 250 nA, during the predrive the sensor-front-end processor (SFEP) waits to receive from the microcontroller (MC) a first command (sc), which the microcontroller (MC) outputs in adjustable time intervals, or a second command (st), which the microcontroller (MC) outputs when it is informed by the sensor-front-end processor (SFEP) that a request (irq) to interrupt predriving one of the external sensors was generated, and to acquire and condition the sensor signals, and after reception of said first command (sc) or said second command (st) the sensor-front-end processor (SFEP) stops predriving the external sensors, drives individual external sensors in accordance with each external sensor by a sensor-front-end-processor's temperature-stable precision source, sets its own measuring range in accordance with the external sensor, acquires a coarse code of a current signal and a coarse code of a voltage signal from the external sensor, conditions the sensor signal from the external sensor in order that an analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) within the RFID smart label (ASL) acquires a fine code of the current signal and a fine code of the voltage signal from the external sensor.