Design and Distortion Analysis of Passive Sensor Probes for the Measurements in Electric Fields

The sensor probes deployed in the electric fields will cause the distortion in the vicinities, therefore it may significantly affect the accuracy of the measurements in the electric fields. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to separate the electric field distortion due to the spherical sensor probes in a uniform electric field. Moreover, we also investigate the impacts of the spherical sensor probes to the original electric field distortion in terms of the size of sensor probes, the electrode materials, the coupling between the polar electrodes in the design of sensor probes. Our simulation results show that a passive electric field sensor system with the bands from 5 Hz to 200 kHz, and a 20 nF capacitance, combining with our new electric field distortion correction scheme, can surprise meet the requirements of the practical engineering. Moreover, our simulation results also show that the electric field sensor probe system we suggested only has 0.16 % nonlinear errors compared with the corresponding original system measurements. We hope our work will stimulate the future research in the design of the sensor probe systems for monitoring of the electric field. Copyright © 2013 IFSA.