What is the gap between Chinese and foreign sensor industries?

Sensors, as a cutting-edge technology of modern science and technology, are considered one of the three pillars of modern information technology and are also recognized as the most promising high-tech industry at home and abroad. Let's learn about the relevant content with the editor of Analog Electronics.

What is the gap between Chinese and foreign sensor industries?

However, when sensors are ushering in spring, what the Chinese public seems to see is still a feast for foreign semiconductor giants. Industry insiders believe that although China's sensor market is developing rapidly, there is still a big gap between local sensor technology and the world level. This gap is manifested in the backwardness of sensors in perceiving information on the one hand, and the backwardness of sensors themselves in intelligence and networking on the other hand. Due to the lack of sufficient large-scale applications, domestic sensors are not only low-tech, but also high-priced, and it is difficult to be competitive in the market.

The gaps in China's sensor industry

Dong Yonggui, professor of the Department of Precision Instruments at Tsinghua University, said that China began to pay attention to the research of sensor technology roughly after 1980. After years of efforts, the development level of sensor research is relatively good. However, the technological progress in productization is not very ideal. For many sensor technologies, the research level of domestic laboratories is not very poor, but unfortunately they have not been fully utilized and have not been transformed into mature products entering the market.

He said that the research of sensor technology requires a relatively long time of investment. It takes 6 to 8 years for a sensor to mature. Generally, Chinese companies cannot afford such a long period of time. Chinese companies can hardly afford failure, and the risk of failure in sensor research is very high.

According to what Dong Yonggui learned during his visit to Japan, many of the R&D projects supported by Japanese companies cannot be turned into products, but the companies can afford it as long as 2 to 3 out of 10 can be turned into products.

"In contrast, many of our companies are prepared to take what others already have." Dong Yonggui said that this kind of thinking is problematic, including that we always want to introduce foreign talents who have their own projects. "They are not prepared to raise fish, but to catch a fish."

Compared with large-scale instruments and equipment, sensors generally require less investment in the productization process, so they are more suitable for small enterprises to invest in. In this regard, China should have an advantage. However, if we consider it from another perspective, this is also a disadvantage.

One characteristic of the sensor industry is that the sensor itself has high technical content, but the price of a single sensor is generally not high. One result of this characteristic is that although the technical added value of the sensor is high, it is difficult to generate considerable output value by relying solely on the sensor.

According to Professor Dong Yonggui's analogy, sensors are a bit like the "medicine guide" in traditional Chinese medicine. Their own functions are important, but they still need to rely on the whole medicine to achieve scale. Once many foreign sensor companies have a breakthrough in a certain sensor, they will soon develop related measuring instruments.

Moreover, under China's patent protection mechanism, the key technologies developed with great effort in sensors often present a kind of "know-how". After being copied, it is difficult to explain clearly, and the enterprises cannot afford to sue. Although there are MEMS sensor enterprises in China, they are all commissioned for processing. If things go wrong, the processing enterprises may take them over and make them themselves. The current enterprise innovation system has big problems.

In 2012, a senior in the domestic sensor field said at a conference that the reason why China's sensor industry was not developing well was because it lacked leaders who could give lectures at the State Council. The research and development time in this field was long and it was not prominent enough. It was a very small thing in itself, and the physical phenomena it was based on were discovered decades or hundreds of years ago.

The scholar pointed out that this kind of research is actually very hard. For example, there is an accelerometer used in the oil industry to measure seismic waves. It is based on a principle proposed by the Soviet Union decades ago. However, it was not until the expert went to the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the product was developed and applied.

"The more a field requires accumulation of strength and extensive sowing and little harvest, the greater the gap between us." Dong Yonggui believes that the gap now tends to widen further.

Will the next five years be the life and death line for domestic sensors?

In recent years, the overall scale of China's sensor industry has gradually expanded, and has been significantly applied in the automotive industry, including sensor applications in automobile tires, sensor applications in airbags, sensor applications in chassis systems, sensor applications in engine operation management systems, sensor applications and demands in exhaust gas and air quality control systems, sensor applications and demands in ABS, sensor applications and demands in vehicle driving safety systems, sensor applications and demands in automobile anti-theft systems, sensor applications and demands in engine combustion control systems, sensor applications and demands in automobile positioning systems, and sensor applications and demands in other automotive systems. In addition, Chinese sensors also have new applications in other fields, such as industrial control, environmental protection, facility agriculture, multimedia imaging, and other related sensor applications.

The "2014-2018 China Sensor Industry Forecast and Investment Strategy Research Report" shows that although China's sensor industry has developed rapidly, there are also some unfavorable factors. For example, the industry foundation is weak in terms of product technology, technology is out of touch with production, the product technology level is low, the product variety is lacking, and the company's product research and development capabilities are weak. On the other hand, the country continues to formulate strategies and policies that are conducive to the development of the sensor industry, the rapid development of the whole system market throughout the year, and the continuous promotion of emerging technologies have also become favorable factors for the development of sensor networks.

The above is an introduction to the gap between the Chinese and foreign sensor industries in analog electronics. If you want to know more relevant information, please pay more attention to eeworld. eeworld Electronic Engineering will provide you with more complete, detailed and updated information.