微機電系統在個人和消費電子領域的應用

　　收集傳感器數據相對簡單；分析數據并在復雜的消費者或醫療應用程序中使用它不是。本文討論了在一個復雜系統中引入一個簡單傳感器時所遇到的一些挑戰。

　　基于MEMS（微機電系統）技術的傳感器精確跟蹤運動的能力已經完全改變了健康和健身市場。MEMS技術是一種自然適合監測健身，因為它可以嵌入在鞋和服裝跟蹤性能。然而，令許多公司感到驚訝的是，MEMS技術可以帶來重大而獨特的價值的利基應用數量。例如，MEMS可以用來檢測一個家里的老人是否已經倒下，不能起床或完全停止移動。在這兩種情況下，個人監視器都可以通過射頻鏈路請求幫助。

　　MEMS傳感器技術也迅速成為便攜式和手持消費電子設備的預期功能，考慮到它可以提高可用性的方法。例如，感知傾斜、旋轉和手勢的能力正成為游戲外圍設備的標準功能。便攜式設備使用MEMS來確定顯示文本和圖像的方向，以便用戶可以從正確的角度查看它們。可以使用諸如航位推算等高級功能來提供本地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.