In many applications electronic sensors are used to improve performanc
e and reliability of measurement systems. Such sensors should provide
a correct transfer from the physical signal to be measured to the elec
trical output signal. One important step to achieve this, is to calibr
ate each sensor by applying different reference input signals and adju
sting the sensor transfer accordingly Besides expensive reference equi
pment the calibration process takes much time and attention per indivi
dual sensor, which means a considerable increase in sensor production
costs. By including at the sensor or sensor interface chip a programma
ble calibration facility the calibration of such smart sensors can eas
ily be automated and can be executed for a batch of sensors at a time,
thus minimizing the calibration time and costs. This paper presents a
calibration method and options for integration in the smart sensor co
ncept, in hardware as well as in software. An advantage of the propose
d method is that it does not need a large matrix of calibration data,
which needs to be stored in a look-up table or converted into a correc
tion formula, but instead it uses a step-by-step approach to correct t
he sensor transfer at each calibration measurement until the error is
sufficiently small.