ISO26262-Compliant Inductive Long-Stroke Linear-Position Sensors as an Alternative to Hall-Based Sensors for Automotive Applications

To ensure safety, vehicle companies require position sensors that maintain accuracy and avoid target loss even in harsh automotive environments. Most vehicle position sensors are Hall-based, but even improved gradiometric 3D Hall sensors using the arctangent operation are vulnerable to external magnetic fields (EXMFs) and encounter difficulty at long-stroke (LS) positions. An ISO26262-compliant inductive position sensor (IPS) employing a 3.5 MHz-induced magnetic field source (much higher in frequency than vehicle–environment EXMFs) is proposed in this study as an alternative. To meet the safety goal, a threshold LS distance of 12 mm was set. Then the IPS was compared to existing Hall-based sensors. The B field of the existing 3D sensor was weak at LS and the airgap between sensor face and magnet target caused a large error in accuracy, whereas the IPS was not affected by LS. Because of its high excitation frequency, the IPS was also largely unaffected by EXMFs, as was demonstrated by ISO11452-8 and 0.1 T immunity tests. The proposed IPS outperformed existing 3D Hall sensors, achieving stable accuracy within ±0.85% for different airgaps (1.5–2.5 mm) and proving robust to magnetic and LS effects.