New Modeling & Evaluation Approach for Capacitive Occupant Detection in Vehicles

Capacitive occupant detection is a contactless sensing technique which helps to improve safety standards in vehicles. This paper details the problem of relating measured sensor signals with physical model parameters. An innovative modeling approach is discussed, which takes into account different current pathways including also the influence of human passengers. Furthermore, a new electrode area variation method is introduced which allows to extract wanted model parameters. Finite Element Simulation shows that the proposed electrode area variation method is applicable for capacitive occupant detection sensors.