Most wireless sensing systems use traditional closed-circuit sensors placed in wireless telemetry circuits. A new open-circuit sensor developed by Stanley Woodard and Bryant Taylor at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., will transform the sensor market with a new framework for designing, powering, and interrogating sensors. SansEC Sensors are electrically conductive, open-circuit wireless sensors that require no electrical connections, offering greater durability, damage resiliency, reliability, and functional diversity than conventional sensors, while at the same time being easier and less expensive to produce.

SansEC Sensors use stand-alone 2-D geometric patterns of electrically conductive material to store both electrical and magnetic energy when powered via external oscillating magnetic fields. The result provides all the functionality of a traditional closed circuit having multiple electrical components without requiring electrical connections. The sensor functions as a single component and can measure a portfolio of unrelated physical quantities, and by eliminating the electrical connections, a traditional circuit failure source is thus eliminated. Using standard metal deposition methods, the sensor can be deposited directly onto any smooth electrically non-conductive material.