IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO.

5, MAY 2011

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Enhancement of Measurement Efficiency for

Electrical Capacitance Tomography
Zhaoyan Fan, Member, IEEE, and Robert X. Gao, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractThis paper presents a new sensing method to improve

the efficiency of electrical capacitance tomography. Instead of
applying one excitation signal to one electrode at a time, the
multiple excitation capacitance polling (MECaP) method progressively applies an increasing number of multiple excitations to
multiple electrodes and simultaneously measures the capacitance
values, thereby significantly increasing the image scanning speed.
The performance of a MECaP-based sensor system is numerically simulated and analyzed using the finite element method.
Experimental evaluation of the numerical results demonstrates the
effectiveness and efficiency of the new sensing technique and its
applicability to a broad range of commercial and industrial applications where permittivity determination through capacitance
measurement provides an effective means for noninvasive dynamic
processes monitoring in an enclosed environment.
Index TermsCapacitance measurement, detection algorithms,
electrical capacitance tomography (ECT), electronic circuits,
error analysis, image sensors, monitoring.

I. I NTRODUCTION

LECTRICAL capacitance tomography (ECT) is a technique to determine the dielectric permittivity distribution
in the interior of an enclosed environment through external
capacitance measurements [1]. The technique is advantageous
over other tomographic techniques in terms of its effectiveness,
portability, robustness, no exposure to radiation hazard, and low
cost. Since its invention in the 1980s, ECT has found numerous
applications, e.g., measurement of multiphase flows (gasliquid
and gassolids) in pipelines, visualization of combustion flames
in engines [2], [3], detection of leakage from buried water
pipes [4], and flow pattern identification [5], [6]. ECT enables
insight into the material distribution within a closed vessels and,
consequently, into the governing mechanism in the process,
without disturbing the process itself.
Typically, an ECT system consists of multiple electrodes
[7] that are symmetrically mounted inside or outside a cylindrical container, as illustrated in Fig. 1. During the period
of a scanning frame, an excitation signal, e.g., an alternating
current (ac) voltage, is applied to one of the electrodes, and the

Manuscript received June 19, 2010; revised December 29, 2010; accepted
January 4, 2011. Date of publication March 3, 2011; date of current version
April 6, 2011. The Associate Editor coordinating the review process for this
paper was Dr. Jiong Tang.
The authors are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University
of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269 USA (e-mail: RGao@engr.uconn.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2011.2113010

Fig. 1. Illustration of the major components in an ECT system.

remaining electrodes are kept at the ground potential, acting

as detector electrodes. Subsequently, the voltage potential at
each of the remaining electrodes is measured, one at a time,
by the measurement electronics to determine the interelectrode
capacitance [8], [9]. The measured capacitances can be then
represented in a matrix and used to reconstruct the tomographic
image of the object within the cylindrical container [10][12].
Assuming a total of M electrodes is equipped in an ECT sensor,
the total number of independent capacitance measurements is
H, which can be expressed as
H=

M (M 1)
.
2

(1)

The number of electrodes M reported in the literature has

typically been in the range of 632 [7], [13]. Correspondingly, the number of independent capacitance measurements H
ranges from 15 to 496, as per (1). The number of capacitance
measurements to be performed in the ECT sensor is a critical
parameter as it affects the quality of the reconstructed image. A
large number of electrodes contribute to improving the resolution of the image reconstruction but lead to a smaller surface
area of the respective electrodes. This will cause decreased
magnitude of the interelectrode capacitance and a lower signalto-noise ratio (SNR).
In recent years, the grouping technique [14] has been introduced to combine two or more electrodes into one segment to
increase the magnitude of the received signals, as illustrated
in Fig. 2. However, excitation of the electrodes within each
segment still follows the one-electrode-at-a-time pattern. The
grouping configuration is repeated along the sensor circumference through shifting the connection by one electrode in each
step to form a series of independent measurements. An example
is shown in Fig. 2 for an eight-electrode sensor operated in the
four-segment mode. The total surface area covered by the electrodes is equal to that of a four-electrode ECT sensor without

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Fig. 2. Grouping configurations for an ECT sensor operated in the foursegment mode.

segmentation; thus, the SNR remains the same as that of the

four-electrode sensor. After measuring the first six capacitance
values as per (1) for Configuration 1, the electrodes are reconnected as Configuration 2. This can be viewed as a rotation of
the four electrodes by a degree of = 45 . As a result, the total
number of independent measurements performed by the ECT
electronics in each scanning frame will be twice as high (12
versus 6) as that of a conventional four-electrode sensor. This
leads to higher resolution for better image reconstruction. The
advantage of grouping for improved measurement resolution
while maintaining the SNR has been demonstrated in [14].
Similar to the grouping technique, researchers [15], [16] have
investigated the feasibility of applying the same excitation
signal to multiple electrodes.
The scanning speed is an important parameter of ECT as it
determines utilizing of ECT for online real-time applications
involving fast changing dynamics, e.g., combustion or explosion within an enclosure. Currently, the maximum scanning
speed achieved by ECT is reported to be 3001000 frames/s
[16]. While satisfactory for general applications, such a speed
is still much lower than optical methods. For engine combustion
process imaging, it is desirable to resolve the combustion
process at every crank angle (1 increment), for a crank rotational speed of up to 6000 rev/min. This requires data collection
at an equivalent speed of 36 000 frames/s. Such a requirement
motivates research to introduce a new method for electrical
capacitance measurement system that is generic in nature and
can significantly improve the efficiency of operation.
This paper presents a new method, which is termed multiple
excitation capacitance polling (MECaP), to significantly increase the image scanning speed of ECT. Unlike the traditional
ac method where an excitation signal is applied to one electrode
at each time step, the MECaP method simultaneously applies
multiple excitation signals to multiple electrodes on the ECT
sensor and simultaneously measures the capacitances, thereby
significantly increasing the scanning speed. After the working
principle of MECaP is introduced through an analysis of the
equivalent circuit in Section II, a numerical model is presented
in Section III. The results of a simulation are then evaluated by
experimental studies on a test bed, where the identification of
multiple signal reception transmitted from multiple excitation
electrodes is confirmed. The effect of several circuit parameters
on the potential of further scanning speed improvement is
then discussed in Section IV, and conclusions are drawn in
Section V.

Fig. 3. Illustration of MECaP technique in an M -electrode ECT system with

N (N M 1) excitation signals simultaneously applied.

II. W ORKING P RINCIPLE

The sequential, single-electrode excitation method can be
time consuming to execute, particularly when the number of
electrodes M is large. The MECaP method, in comparison, has
the following feature.
1) In an ECT sensor containing M electrodes, multiple ac
excitation signals of different frequencies are progressively and in increasing numbers applied to N (N > 1)
electrodes, while one of the remaining (M N ) electrodes serves as a signal detector for all of the excited
electrodes.
2) Each of the N electrodes is excited by a designated
frequency, i.e., f1 , f2 , . . . , fN .
3) The received signals can be separated either through a
hardware configuration (e.g., consisting of a series of
bandpass filters whose central frequencies are tuned to
f1 , f2 , . . . , fN , respectively) or through a software algorithm (e.g., time-frequency decomposition [17]).
4) Individual interelectrode capacitance is calculated from
the ratio of the excitation signal magnitude to that of the
received signal.
As a consequence of the MECaP method, an ECT system
consisting of M electrodes will need only M 1 capacitance
measurement steps to be performed to finish a frame, which is
M/2 times faster than the traditional method. As an example,
in an eight-electrode ECT system (see Fig. 3), a total of (8
7)/2 = 28 capacitance measurements need to be performed
within each scanning frame by the traditional method, whereas
the MECaP method requires only seven measurements, i.e.,
a 75% reduction in the total measurement steps needed. The
detailed measurement sequence is illustrated in Table I.
In Table II, the MECaP method is compared with the traditional ac technique reported in [4] and [5] and the grouping

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TABLE I
M EASUREMENT S EQUENCE FOR AN E IGHT-E LECTRODE
ECT S ENSOR U SING MECaP

TABLE II
C OMPARISON OF THE N UMBER OF M EASUREMENT
R EQUIRED BY D IFFERENT T ECHNIQUES

Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit for the measurement of C12 .

technique presented in [7]. It is shown that, for the case where

no grouping is employed, the MECaP method can reduce the
total number of measurements H to be performed in each
scanning frame from M (M 1)/2 to (M 1) or by a total of
(M 1)(M 2)/2. If the electrodes are grouped into K sections, the MECaP reduces the measurements by (M/K)(K
1)(K 2)/2. For both cases, the reduction in the number of
measurements is proportional to the square of the parameters
M and K. Therefore, when the number of electrodes and/or
sections in the sensor is large, the potential of scanning speed
increase in terms of frame/s will be significant.
To illustrate how MECaP is realized, assume that capacitance
C12 in Fig. 4 is to be measured. In the first step, electrode 1 is
excited by a sinusoidal wave u1 , e.g., of 15-V amplitude and
1-MHz frequency.
From the equivalent circuit in Fig. 4, the relationship between
the excitation signal and capacitance C12 , taking into consideration the resistance of the channel switching circuitry Ron , can
be determined as

u1 = i (Z12 +3Ron ) = i


1
+3Ron . (2)
j 2f1 C12

Accordingly, the capacitance C12 is found to be




C12 = 1/ 2f1 1/a2 (3Ron )2

(3)

where f1 = 1 MHz is the frequency of the excitation signal, and

a = |A(i2 )/A(u1 )| is the ratio of the output current amplitude
to the input voltage amplitude. Thus, given a known amplitude

Fig. 5. Equivalent circuit for the measurement of C13 and C23 .

of u1 , the capacitance C12 can be determined by measuring the

amplitude of the output current A(i2 ).
Subsequent measurement of C13 and C23 is illustrated in
Fig. 5, where two electrodes (1 and 2) are simultaneously
excited by two sinusoidal input signals with the frequencies
being f1 and f2 , respectively. A third electrode (3) serves as
the ground for the measurement.
When multiple voltage sources are presented in a linear circuit, each of them can be independently analyzed by assuming
other sources being held at the zero potential. For example, to
analyze the effect of the input voltage u1 on the circuit, excitation signal u2 is first considered to be zero. The relationship

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Fig. 6. Equivalent circuit for the measurement of capacitances C1N C(N 1)N .

between the output current i3 and the input voltages u1 and u2

can be expressed in the form of


 i3 (j2f1 ) 

a13 = |H13 (j2f1 )| = 
u1 (j2f1 ) 




1


=
2Ron + (Ron + Z13 )(4Ron + Z12 )/(2Ron + Z12 ) 

a23

(4)


 i3 (j2f2 ) 

= |H23 (j2f2 )| = 
u2 (j2f2 ) 




1
.
= 
2Ron + (Ron + Z23 )(4Ron + Z12 )/(2Ron + Z12 ) 
(5)

Since the value of C12 is known from the previous first

measurement step, the capacitances C13 and C23 can be solved
by substituting the values of |H13 | and |H23 | into (4) and (5), respectively. Following this process, a total number of (N 1)
(N/2) capacitance values can be determined from the first N
measurements, as exemplified in Table I. To measure these capacitance values (i.e., C1N , C2N , . . . , C(N 1)N ), a total num-

i1 2Ron

i1 2Ron

...

i1 2Ron
i1

i2 (2Ron + Z12 )

ber of N excitation signals {(u1 , f1 ), (u2 , f2 ), . . . , (uN , fN )}

will be applied to electrodes 1N. The electrode (N + 1) will
be used as the receiving electrode. A generalized equivalent
circuit model for measuring the N capacitance values is shown
in Fig. 6.
Assuming u2 = u3 = . . . uN 1 = 0, the relationship between the excitation signal u1 and the port currents
i1 , i2 , . . . , iN can be established as N + 1 simultaneous equations as (6), shown at the bottom of the page, where Z1k =
1/jC1k , with k, = 2, . . . , N + 1 is the equivalent impedances
between electrodes 1 and k. Equation (6) can be rewritten in the
matrix form as
1 i = u1

where the matrix 1 is defined by (8), shown at the bottom

of the page, and the current and voltage vectors being i =
[i1 i2 . . . iN iN +1 ]T and u1 = [u1 u1 . . . u1 0]T , respectively.
Based on the Cramers rule, the ratio between the current
iN +1 and the voltage u1 can be expressed as

 

 iN +1   det [1 ] 

=
(9)
a1(N +1) = 
u1   det [1 ] 
where the symbol det[] represents the determinant of the
matrix 1 , and the matrix 1 is an N + 1 by N + 1 constant

i3 (2Ron + Z13 )
......

+i2

2Ron
2Ron

1 = . . .

2Ron
1

+i3

(2Ron + Z12 )



iN +1 2Ron + Z1(N +1)
iN +1

= u1
= u1
...
= u1
=0

(6)

(2Ron + Z13 )
...

(7)

...


2Ron + Z1(N +1)
1

(8)

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Fig. 7.

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Scanning speed calculated for different number of simultaneous excitations.

matrix formed by replacing the N + 1 column in 1 with

the column vector u1 /u1 in (10), shown at the bottom of the
page. The term det[1 ] is a first-order linear function of the
impedance Z1(N +1) = 1/jC1(N +1) . Accordingly, (9) can be
expressed as
2
C1(N
+1) + C1(N +1) + =

|det[1 ]|
a1(N +1)

(11)

where , , and are real constants calculated from the term

| det[1 ]|. With the value of a1(N +1) measured from the experiment, the capacitance C1(N +1) can be calculated by using the
following expression:

1 ]|
2 + 4 |det[
a1(N +1)
.
(12)
C1(N +1) =
2
Similar to C1(N +1) , the capacitance value of Cx(N +1) , where
x = 2, 3, . . . , N , can be calculated by assuming all the excitation signals are zero, except ux , and repeating the steps in
(6)(12). This means that, at the measurement step N , the
associated N (N + 1)/2 capacitance can be determined from
the capacitance values determined in the previous N 1 steps
and the magnitude of the output signals at each of the excitation
frequencies. As a result, for an ECT system consisting of M
electrodes, the total number of M (M 1)/2 capacitance
values can be measured by M 1 steps, using the MECaP
method, as compared with the M (M 1)/2 steps required by
the traditional method.

2Ron
2Ron

...
1 =
2Ron

2Ron
1

(2Ron + Z12 )

Fig. 8. Numerical model for evaluating the MECaP method.

To gain a systematic overview of the improvement in scanning speed enabled by the developed MECaP technique, the
total number of measurement steps by using MECaP and the
traditional ac method were calculated. As shown in Fig. 7,
the results from the two methods were compared in four
different cases, where the number of the electrodes M was
assumed to be 8, 12, 16, and 44 (grouped into four sections),
respectively.
As shown in Fig. 7, when the number of simultaneously
excited electrodes N is equal to the upper limit of Nmax =
M 1, the maximum scanning speed achieved by MECaP can

(2Ron + Z13 )
...

...
(2Ron + Z1N )
1

1
1

1
0

(10)

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Fig. 9. Interelectrode impedance calculated from the simulation model. (a) Z13 . (b) (Adjacent electrodes) Z12 .

be increased from about twice (for the case of 44 electrodes)

to eight times (for the 16-electrode configuration), as compared
with the traditional ac method. In cases where Nmax < M 1,
when the number of activated electrodes has reached the upper
limit of Nmax , the remaining measurements will be continued
with the simultaneous excitation of Nmax electrodes, until the
completion of a scanning frame. The expression of the total
number of measurements H to be performed in each frame, as
shown in Table II, is then modified as


M (M 1)/Nmax (Nmax + 1)
(13)
H = Nmax +
2
INT
where the symbol [X]INT represents rounding the number X
up to the nearest integer. It is shown that, when Nmax takes
the upper bound Nmax = M 1, the right-hand side of (13)
reduces to M 1, which is consistent with the expression

given in Table II. As an example, for Nmax = 2, the number of

simultaneous excitations will remain at 2 after the completion
of the second measurement step, and the remaining capacitance
values will be measured using two simultaneous excitations.
Therefore, for the case M = 12, the total number of measurements per frame is calculated as H = 2 + (66 3)/2 = 34.
The corresponding scanning speed is then increased to 194%
of the traditional method, for which a total of 66 measurement
steps are needed for each frame. This represents a significant
increase in the scanning speed for the same sensor configuration
enabled by the MECaP method.
It is shown in (4) and (5) that Z12 , which is the impedance
associated with the capacitance C12 measured in the first step,
affects the measurement in the second step by a factor of
(4Ron + Z12 )/(2Ron + Z12 ). This factor approaches a constant (i.e., 1), when the term Ron is negligible in comparison
with the magnitude of impedances Z12 . Therefore, for any

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p < q M , when the condition Ron  Zpq is satisfied, the

calculation of capacitance in all the steps described in (2), (4),
(5), and (12) can be simplified by



Cpq(simplied) = 1/ 2fp 1/a2pq (3Ron )2 .

(14)

Equation (14) states that the measurement of impedance

(or the corresponding capacitance) can be determined by the
presently measured output signal (e.g., a13 = |i13 |/|u3 |), independent of the previous measurements. As a result, when
Ron  Zpq , the MECaP method can be simplified, and multiple excitation signals can be simultaneously applied to different
electrodes from the first step onward to further increase the
frame scanning speed. In realistic applications, the value of
Ron is determined by the ON-state resistance of complementary
metaloxidesemiconductor (CMOS) switches, which is on the
order of tens to hundreds of ohms. The impedance Zpq , on
the other hand, is affected by the permittivity of the materials
being measured as well as the cross-sectional area of the
electrodes.
III. N UMERICAL S TUDY
To evaluate the effect of circuit parameters on the performance of MECaP, a numerical model for an eight-electrode
ECT setup was developed for simulating the electrode excitation process, based on the ANSYS platform, as illustrated in
Fig. 8. The diameter of the cylinder was chosen in the range
of 40400 mm. The material inside the cylinder was modeled
using the element type SOLID231, with a relative permittivity
ranging from 1 (air) to 81 (water under the room temperature).
There are a total of eight electrodes attached to the outer
surface of the cylinder, each of which covering an angular range
of 42 . The scheme of circuit connection was based on the
configuration presented in Fig. 6. The value of Ron was set to
30 , based on the property of the CMOS switch ADG201 [18].
The current flowing through the CMOS switch resistor Ron was
simulated by means of a coupled circuit and an electromagnetic
analysis. It was then used for calculating the capacitance values
between the electrodes.
In Fig. 9, the impedance values of C13 and C12 calculated under an excitation frequency of 1 MHz are shown. To
illustrate the relationship between Zpq and Ron , the calculated impedance values, represented by the vertical axis in
Fig. 9 were normalized by Ron according to the following
expression:
ZNORM = |Zpq |/Ron .

(15)

It is shown that, when the diameter of the ECT sensor

is small and/or the permittivity of the material is low, the
value of the normalized impedance is large. For example,
when air is inside a 40- mm-diameter ECT setup, the calculated capacitance between adjacent electrodes 1 and 2 will be
C12 = 0.27 pF. This corresponds to an impedance of Z12 =
589 k (ZNORM = 19, 364), under an excitation frequency
of 1 MHz. This indicates that the condition of |Zpq |  Ron

Fig. 10. Relative measurement error of C23 (in percentage) when two simultaneous excitations are applied at the first measurement step.

is met, and detection of the material can follow the simplified MECaP method. Conversely, when the material permittivity and/or the diameter increase, the impedance between
the electrodes is reduced due to the increased capacitance.
The value of ZNORM can then be as low as 24, as in the
case where a 400 -mm-diameter ECT sensor is measuring
water ( = 81). In this case, the standard MECaP method, as
previously described, should be followed to avoid a measurement error due to neglect of Ron . This error can be defined
in relative terms as (Cpq(simplied) Cpq(rmN onM ECaP ) )
100%/Cpq(NonMECaP) , where Cpq(simplied) is the capacitance measured by the circuitry when using the simplified
MECaP method, as defined in (14), and Cpq(NonMECaP) is capacitance measured when using the traditional single excitation
method.
To systematically quantify measurement error, the output of
the ECT sensor was simulated using an finite element model.
Two excitation signals of 1.0 and 1.2 MHz were simultaneously applied to electrodes 1 and 2 at the first measurement
step to simulate the simplified MECaP technique. The relative
measurement error using such a simplified MECaP method, as
compared with using the standard single excitation scheme is
illustrated in Fig. 10.
It is shown that, when applying the simplified MECaP
method, the maximum measurement error, shown in Fig. 10
as the contour curves, can significantly vary, depending on the
permittivity of the materials and the dimension of the ECT sensor. When materials of low relative permittivity are measured
in a small ECT setup, small errors (e.g., on the order of less
than 0.1%) can be expected. However, when the material has a
high relative permittivity (e.g., = 81 for water), and the size of
the ECT sensor is large (e.g., D > 327 mm), the measurement
error can quickly increase to over 10%. This indicates that the
standard MECaP method presented in this paper provides a
general solution to the problem of multiple excitations in an
ECT application, whereas the simplified MECaP approach may
be seen as a special case, when the combination of material

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Fig. 11. MECaP circuit design and prototyping. (a) Functional modules of the MECaP circuitry. (b) Prototype on printed circuit board.

TABLE III
M EASUREMENT S TEPS FOR N ON -MECaP (U PPER S ECTION ; 28 S TEPS ) AND MECaP M ETHODS (L OWER S ECTION ; 11 S TEPS)

permittivity and ECT sensor size allows for neglecting Ron .

For applications that fall into the upright corner of Fig. 10,
such as monitoring flows in a large diameter pipe, the standard
MECaP is required to ensure measurement accuracy. Otherwise, the simplified MECaP method may be applied to reduce
computation complexity and further increase the measurement
speed.

IV. E XPERIMENTAL S TUDY

To evaluate the validity of the MECaP method, a prototype
of the MECaP circuit was designed, prototyped, and tested, as
shown in Fig. 11.
Three waveform generators were realized on the circuit board
by using AD9833 as the excitation source to generate sine
signals at 0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 MHz, respectively. The circuitry

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contains a total of eight electrode control modules (ECM), each

of which controls the connection of a dedicated ECT electrode
to either one of the three excitation sources or the receiving
channel, after being processed by a built-in preamplifier. To
extract capacitance-related information from each excitation
channel, three lock-in amplifiers were realized to filter the
received signal according to the specified frequencies through
synchronization with the three excitation sources. The output
waveforms from each lock-in amplifier is sampled and recorded
by a computer via a National Instruments PCI-6259 data acquisition card. An Atmega 128L microcontroller was designed to
initiate the frequency/phase setting of the waveform generators,
adjust the amplification gains of the lock-in amplifiers, and
generate control sequences for the ECMs. For the purpose of
calibration, a firmware is designed to enable the developed
circuitry to work in either the MECaP or the traditional single
excitation or non-MECaP mode. This is achieved by controlling
the state of the three waveform generators and the related
electric switches. The prototyped circuit was tested on an eightelectrode ECT sensor, which has a diameter of 40 mm and a
length of 40 mm. The whole system is powered by a TENMA
72-1080 direct-current power supply outputting 15 V.
In Table III, the time sequence of the non-MECaP and
MECaP methods being tested are shown. For both methods, a
total of 28 capacitance values were required to be measured
to complete each frame of measurement. The time period for
each measurement step was set to 0.2 ms. For the non-MECaP
method, 28 measurement steps were taken by using a single
excitation at 1 MHz. For the MECaP method, the number
of excited electrode was increased from one to three in the
first three measurement steps. As per (13), a total number
of 11 measurement steps were needed to measure all the
28 capacitance values. For the purpose of comparing the result
from the two methods, the microcontroller was programmed
to alternate between the MECaP and non-MECaP methods
during the measurement process. A total of 30 frames were
captured, processed, and recorded for each method. To compare
the measured results, the data from the MECaP method were
realigned according to the step sequence used in the nonMECaP method. In Fig. 12, the mean values of the measured
capacitance and the measurement standard deviation are shown,
respectively.
It is shown in Fig. 12(a) that the capacitance data measured
by the MECaP method are consistent with that measured by the
non-MECaP method. As the distance between two electrodes
increases, e.g., from C12 , C13 , . . . to C15 (as illustrated in the
first five bars in the figure), the measured capacitance value
decreases. In addition, the standard deviation of the MECaP
method, as shown in Fig. 12(b), is at the same level as that of
the non-MECaP method (which is < 0.007 pF). This verifies
that adding the number of excitation frequencies did not lead to
decreased measurement quality. For each of the bars plotted in
Fig. 12(a), the difference between the MECaP and non-MECaP
methods was normalized by using the non-MECaP data, as
plotted in Fig. 12(c).
Comparing with the traditional non-MECaP method, the
error associated with using the MECaP method has shown to
be within the range of less than 1.5%. At the same time, it is

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Fig. 12. Experimental results. (a) Mean value of the measured capacitance in
each step. (b) Standard deviation of the measurement. (c) Measurement error of
MECaP (relative to the non-MECaP data).

shown that the 28 capacitance values could be measured in 11,

instead of 28 steps, using three excitations only. This represents
an increase in the scanning speed of 155%, without appreciably
reducing the measurement accuracy. Thus, the experimental

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result has confirmed the advantage of MECaP, as revealed in

the numerical study.
V. C ONCLUSION
A new capacitance measurement technique has been presented for significantly improving the efficiency of the ECT
sensing system. The new technique increases the scanning
speed (frame/s) by simultaneously measuring two or more capacitance values. This is achieved by the simultaneous application of a progressively increasing number of excitation signals
of different frequencies to the ECT electrodes. Simulation and
experimental results demonstrated the ability of the developed
new sensing method in increasing the image scanning speed by
up to eight times, as compared with the traditional ac method,
for a nongrouping, 16-electrode sensor configuration. An analysis of the circuit parameters further indicates that a simplified
form of the MECaP method may be adopted to further increase
the scanning speed by directly applying multiple excitations
on the electrodes, when certain circuit condition is met. The
analysis provides the guidelines for the proper application of
the MECaP method. The experimental study conducted on an
eight-electrode ECT sensor has shown that the MECaP method
can effectively increase the scanning speed by 155% with using
only three excitations, with a low measurement error (less than
1.5%) when comparing with the traditional method. Future
research will systematically evaluate the MECaP method under
various parametric and experimental conditions.
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Zhaoyan Fan (M05) received the B.S. degree in

mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University,
Beijing, China, in 2000, the M.S. degree in physical
electronics from the Institute of Electronics, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Beijing, in 2003, and the
Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2009.
In October 2009, he joined the University of
Connecticut, Storrs, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and is currently a Research Assistant Professor
with the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His
research interests include physical sensing methodology and sensing electronics, energy-efficient sensor networks, imaging methods for industrial system
monitoring, smart sensors and structures, and numerical modeling/analysis for
mechatronic system.
Dr. Fan is a member of the IEEE and the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers.

Robert X. Gao (M91SM00F08) received the

M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Technical University, Berlin, Germany, in 1991 and 1985,
respectively.
He was a Professor with the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, from 1995 to 2008, before
joining the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Connecticut, Storrs, in Fall 2008 as
the Pratt and Whitney Endowed Chair Professor.
His research and teaching interests include physicsbased sensing methodology; self-diagnostic and energy-efficient sensors and
sensor networks; mechatronic systems design; medical instrumentation; and
nonstationary signal processing for machine condition monitoring, diagnosis,
and prognosis.
Dr. Gao is an Associate Editor of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I N STRUMENTATION AND M EASUREMENT , the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers (ASME) Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering, and
the Journal of Mechatronics, published by the International Federation of
Automatic Control. He was the recipient of the National Science Foundation
CAREER Award in 1996 and was the faculty advisor and the corecipient of
the Inaugural Best Student Paper Award from the Society of Photo-Optical
Instrumentation Engineers, published on the International Symposium on Smart
Structures and Materials in 1997. He was the recipient of the Barbara H. and
Joseph I. Goldstein Outstanding Junior Engineering Faculty Award and the
Outstanding Senior Faculty Award by the University of Massachusetts Amherst
in 1999 and 2007, respectively. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and ASME, a
Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Electron Devices Society, and a member
of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.