Sensor Technology - Facts and Forecasts
Toward Intelligent and Networked Sensors
The market for sensors will grow steadily in the coming years, according to a study conducted by INTECHNO Consulting in Basel, Switzerland. In 2008, a total of approximately $50 billion will be spent worldwide on sensors for the civilian sector, meaning primarily for use in industry and in products for private households. Thats nearly $18 billion more than was spent in 1998. Western Europe, Japan and the U.S. will remain the major markets for such sensors, accounting for some 83 % of market volume in 2008.
The driving forces behind this growth are sensors with built-in intelligence and sensors with integrated network interfaces. The former include micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), which have the sensor, mechanical parts and electronics all on one chip. The automotive sector is one of several branches of industry that will be employing more and more sensors in their products in the coming years. For the next three or four years, high growth rates are also forecast in the processing industry and the consumer electronics and building technology sectors.
A study by the Freedonia Group market research company reaches similar conclusions about developments in the U.S. According to that study, the U.S. will remain the worlds leading market for sensors in the next ten years. Freedonia estimates that market volume in the U.S. will nearly double between 2003 and 2013, from approximately $9.5 billion to $18.3 billion. The automotive industry is a big growth sector in the U.S. as well and will expand its share of the sensor market in the next ten years from 26 % to 28 %. The second-most important sector for sensorsindustrial applicationswill primarily require sensors for measuring process parameters, such as distance or position recognition. It will also require light-sensitive CMOS sensors that can be used for image recognition.
All sensors, including those used in industry, are becoming increasingly small and intelligent. Sensors without a communication interface will practically disappear from the market by 2010, to be replaced by systems with integrated electronics and connections to communication networks such as field bus and Ethernet. Profibus and field bus-enabled sensors are already posting growth rates of 30 % per year, for example. At the same time, sensors are becoming smaller and smaller, as demonstrated by the Coriolis flow sensor. Devices with a rated diameter of 40 mm are currently state of the art; in 2010, that figure will have been reduced to just 0.1 mm.
The automotive industry is definitely the trendsetter in the consumer goods sector. Today, there are already up to 100 sensors in every vehicle. These support the vehicle electronics by providing information on speed, acceleration, engine speed and other dataand the number of such sensors is clearly on the increase.
Chip manufacturer Infineon expects the share of electronic systems in vehicles to increase from the current 20 % to 30 40 % over the next 10 to 15 years. Frost & Sullivan, a consulting firm, predicts that the market for vehicle sensors will grow from $1.56 billion in 2002 to $2.55 billion in 2009 in Europe alone. According to the Zentralverband Elektrotechnik- und Elektronikindustrie e.V. (Electrical and Electronics Industry AssociationZVEI), this will also generate a significant market growth for micro-mechanical sensors, which are used primarily in the automotive sector in applications such as airbag inflation. Sales of such systems increased by 12 % last year.
Kerstin Purucker