temperaturecompensation

Temperature compensation is a set of methods used to reduce or eliminate the influence of temperature changes on the accuracy, stability, and performance of sensors, instruments, and systems. The goal is to ensure measurements or operations remain reliable across a specified temperature range by accounting for how temperature affects the measured quantity or the device itself.

Temperature affects many physical and electronic properties, including electrical resistance, semiconductor behavior, mechanical dimensions, refractive indices, and chemical reaction rates. Uncompensated drift from these effects can degrade accuracy, repeatability, and calibration validity. Compensation strategies typically rely on measuring the ambient or target temperature and applying a correction to the observed value.

Common approaches include hardware-based compensation, where a temperature sensor is integrated and used to adjust the signal in real time; calibration-based methods, which build a correction function from controlled measurements; and software-based compensation, which employs models, polynomials, or lookup tables to map temperature to a correction value. Quantities such as the temperature coefficient of resistance or the temperature coefficient of the signal are used to quantify sensitivity, and nonlinear or piecewise corrections are common for broader ranges.

Applications span electronics and precision instrumentation (bandgap references, temperature-compensated oscillators, and resistive networks with low temperature drift), optics (laser diode and fiber applications), and industrial sensing (gas, humidity, pH sensors) as well as compensation for thermal expansion in mechanical measurements. Limitations include the need for accurate temperature sensing, potential lag between temperature change and correction, and residual errors if environmental conditions differ from calibration.