Various concerns must be addressed when dealing with temperature sensing applications, which fall into two broad categories: precision temperature measure- ment and system thermal management. Precision temperature measurement applications (such as those encountered in the process control industry) require highly accurate temperature sensors. Applications of this type frequently use a thermocouple (or higher precision sensor) in concert with low offset/low drift analog interface circuits to acquire and condition the temperature signal with minimum error. Sensor absolute accuracy and linearity are primary considerations; sensor cost is a secondary issue. System thermal management schemes, on the other hand, regulate the creation (and/or disposal) of heat within the system. Examples of system thermal man- agement applications are CPU over-temperature detectors in personal computers and thermal shutdown circuits in power systems. The temperature sensor must be accurate enough to detect when temperature is approaching the upper boundry of the “safe” operat- ing limit. Typically, full scale sensor measurement errors of 2°C to 5°C are adequate for such applications. The primary concerns in sensor selection are sensor cost, size, and ease of interface to the processor. TB067 Temperature Sensor Strategies Keep System Thermal Problems in Check Author: Microchip Technology Inc. OVER-TEMPERATURE SHUTDOWN Heat sinking the high power dissipation devices in a system is the simplest thermal management strategy. INTRODUCTION In this case, only the system must be monitored for Various concerns must be addressed when dealing catastrophic over-temperature conditions due to a with temperature ……