Electronic – Is it practical to measure an unknown capacitance by measuring its impedance

capacitanceimpedancemeasurementvoltage measurement

I've recently seen some fourth year engineering projects at my school (University of Waterloo) and one that I found interesting was this novel pressure sensor that uses nano silver separated by a di-electric gel. It is very flexible and the pressure causes a change in capacitance. They are not electrical engineers and for their demo, they used an Arduino to measure the time constant of the RC circuit. It took 1 second to produce a reading.

It could be much nicer and presentable if the reading was instant and I was wondering why they didn't try measuring the capacitance by measuring it's impedance?

So I looked online to find information about finding unknown capacitances with an Arduino and found nothing regarding measuring the impedance.

Though, this one used a 555 timer which is very clever!


My Approach


My circuit design would be as follows:

schematic

First I would use a known resistance value in series with the capacitor and use a known and consistent AC wave to put through, then attempt to measure the voltage drop due to the capacitor. According to the impedance calculation for capacitors $$Z=\frac{-j}{\omega C}$$ where \$\omega\$ is known and Z is measured so I can determine C.

Measuring Impedance


To measure impedance I would put through a half wave rectifier, then a peak detector circuit and read the DC voltage on the peak detector with an Arduino, afterwards discharge the capacitor through the transistor.

I don't know if this would work or be practical; I can't test it at the moment since I don't own any electrical equipment and I'm preparing for exams.

Thanks for the insight!

Best Answer

There will also be effective series resistance and effective series inductance that will add to the measured impedance. If these are small compared to the capacitance, you can get some accurate measurements.

Assuming C is large compared to ESR and ESL, the inductive component will still dominate impedance at higher frequencies. So from that regard it is probably better to use a lower frequency test signal. OTOH if the frequency is too low for the given capacitance, it'll just look like an open circuit. So you'll have the find the sweet spot for the test frequency based on your ESR, C, and ESL values.

Related Topic