Eddy current proximity sensor GAPS

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Honeywell has over 30 years’ experience designing and delivering accurate and reliable proximity sensors that are currently used in a variety of military and commercial aircraft. Honeywell has two new platforms of proximity sensors: General Aerospace Proximity Sensors (GAPS) and Harsh Aerospace Proximity Sensors (HAPS), formerly known as the IHM Series. Both platforms incorporate Honeywell’s patented Integrated Health Monitoring functionality, however the products have some technical differences that allow them to be used in various aerospace applications. GAPS can be used in less harsh areas of application with some differences of electrical and environmental characteristics when compared to HAPS. Whilst, HAPS Aerospace Proximity Sensors are configurable, non-contact, hermetically sealed devices designed to sense the presence or absence of a target in harshduty aircraft applications. The GAPS and HAPS platforms provide on/off outputs and can be configured with an optional health monitoring output to the host system. The sensing mechanism is based on the familiar Eddy Current Killed Oscillator (ECKO) principles; however, Honeywell has designed and implemented the patented FAVCO (Fixed Amplitude Variable Current Oscillator) technology which enables the Honeywell sensors to have the health monitoring (IHM) features. See Figure 5 to compare the ECKO and FAVCO technologies. The GAPS and HAPS Series helps to reduce downtime and maintenance costs due to a unique circuit that can detect any internal failures and display a fault output instead of a false positive or false negative.