Sensor Sensitivity

The sensitivity of a sensor describes the change in output signal for a change in the input signal. This is basically the slope of the input-output relationship (Sensor Transfer Function):

$$\frac{\partial \text{ Output}}{\partial \text{ Input}}$$

High sensitivity is often desirable but costly.

The sensitivity is like the gain of a transfer function. For example, for a speed sensor, we would have:

$$\text{Out}=100\left[\frac{\text{mV}}{\text{km/h}}\right]\times {\text{In}}_{\text{km/h}}+2\text{V}$$

Here, the sensitivity would be $100$ as that’s the slope of the output vs the input at the operating point.