Placement of embedded temperature sensors in a printed circuit board for a manufacturing process

The term of smarter production processes includes the improvement of the automatic control mechanism. Therefore, it is useful to provide more sensor data about the product itself. These information are gathered by sensors (e.g. temperature sensor) which are installed in a permanent position. To increase the quality of the product's sensor data, the sensors can be implemented in the product itself, especially in a product like a printed circuit board (PCB). This particular product is used in a lot of different modern consumer devices and the embedding of electronic components directly into the PCB's substrate material is available. The appropriate placement of the integrated sensor is a challenging issue and will be discussed in this paper. The position influences the sensor readings and must be considered for the automatic control mechanism of the production plant. Therefore, a method is described for calculating the required parameter of the sensor position based on the PCB's layout information. For this, the main parameter is the time coefficient of the temperature gradient.