Something I found useful and i would like to share with the community in order to have a better view on touch sensor design cycles.
A capacitive touch sensor design is not an easy task.
Designers have to make a lot of decisions and consider many factors. New components find their way into the design along the way, so ensuring that they all work together is key.
The touch sensor design is split in two parts:
1) the mechanical design of the sensor
2) the controller programming and tuning
The designer chooses a sensor pattern (e.g. Double Diamond), stack-up materials and a touch sensor controller.
Then follows the controller-sensor system testing (with prototyping or simulation), to make sure they are working well together. If they are not compatible, the designer might have to go back to the previous stage and change the sensor pattern or its parameters or tweak the configuration of the controller.
There can be 3-6 cycles per design till we reach a design that fulfills the requirements. The more re-designs we do, the more prototypes we need to build. By creating virtual prototypes though and test them, we ensure that only the best design reaches the prototyping stage and is compatible with the controller of our choice. You can read the whole article here.
