How to Make More Accurate Current Measurements

There are a number of ways to make current measurements, including magnetically coupled probes, Hall-effect devices, and even some more exotic field sensing probes, but a good quality resistive shunt really cannot be beat in terms of accuracy, bandwidth, and overall general performance.

We likewise make considerable use of high performance shunts in our DC power products to provide extremely accurate current read-back of load currents, spanning the full range of output loading. Not only is the quality and design of the shunt itself critical, but how you treat it and make use of it are all equally important to get great current measurement performance. At the surface it may seem simple; it’s just measuring the voltage drop across a resistor. In reality it is no simple task. It requires appropriate metrological resources to validate the performance.  There are a lot of potential sources of error to recognize, quantify, and contend with.

When working with folks I sometimes encounter those who prefer to develop in their own current measurement into their test systems, instead of relying on the current read-back system already build into their system DC source. There are times when this is the right thing to do and is fine when done correctly. However some of the time there is the preconception that the DC source cannot provide an accurate measurement. The reality is there is a wide selection of DC sources available spanning a wide range of performance, Most likely something will be available that adequately addresses one’s needs. A second issue is, when developing current measurement capabilities for a test system, is truly recognizing all the potential sources of error. It goes well beyond having a good DVM and a good shunt resistor in the test system.  

A colleague here in our R&D group, Mark Peffley, wrote a comprehensive article that was just published. It covers a myriad of things in depth to be taken into consideration in order to make accurate current measurements, including:

• Temperature dependencies
• Self-heating and thermal equilibrium
• Temperature gradients
• Thermo-electric effects
• Additional sources of offset errors
• Voltage drop considerations
• Shunt selection practical considerations
• And more!

So using a shunt is a great foundation for making highly accurate current measurements. That’s why we use them in our power products. But, as Mark points out, there is a lot more to it than just Ohm’s law. When using one of our power products we factor all these things in so that they become a non-issue for the user. However, if you do plan to add current measurement into your test systems then I highly recommend reading Mark’s article “Obtain Accurate Current Measurement” (click here to access) as it is a great reference on the subject!