Is there a good book/introduction on the theory of sensors?

[Simfish]

Especially one that's recent?

It's awfully hard to find anything on the Internet.

 

[jsgruszynski]

This is a very broad question question as posed.

Aspects of it are the "Theory of Physical Measurement" or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrology" .

Aspects of it are the "Theory of Phenomena X" where X is some particular phenomena. For example are you measuring EM energy? Are you measuring physical distance/displacement/angles? This is mostly just "Physics of the World".

Aspects of it are the "Theory of Operation of Sensor Technology Y" where Y is some particular technology. Usually this falls under the category of "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measuring_instrument" ". Measuring microwaves involves a different set of technologies from optical signals. Measuring distance involves different technologies from measuring angles. They can be related but optimizing for one parameter generally shifts and trades-off for others parameters.

High tech or leading-edge performance implementations of any given type of measurement instrument enters into the economic realm - businesses tend to hold that information instead of academia because they make money from it and have an incentive to advance the state of the art.

All of these is probably why you can't find much.

Since you signed "Astro Undergrad", maybe I can assume you mean optical imaging sensors but I can't be sure because you could want to know about any part of the EM spectrum and with or without spatial/angular information. And even knowing that, the specific requirements can change what kind of sensor you should use even within a particular narrow class of application.

 

[Simfish]

Ah, that's a good reply.

It's true that it's a broad question. But most textbooks cover things that are broad. So I would have expected a textbook in something like this.

Good point about businesses holding most of the info though. I got more theory out of an Omega handbook than out of anything else I could find. Granted, I'd prefer textbooks since textbooks aren't discarded so quickly.

Ah - I have interdisciplinary interests, so I actually had biological and chemical sensors in mind.

 

[jsgruszynski]

This might be interesting in lieu of a textbook itself...

http://www.sensorsportal.com/HTML/Sensor.htm