POSITION SENSOR AND POSITION SENSOR ARRANGEMENT FOR A CONTACTLESS DETERMINATION OF A POSITION BY MEANS OF REDUNDANT MAGNET-SENSITIVE SENSOR ELEMENTS

The present invention creates a position sensor and a position sensor arrangement on the basis of magnetic field sensing sensors maximizing reliability against defects and external interference signals and providing redundancy, in particular for shift-by-wire systems in automobiles. The invention includes various aspects and preferred embodiments that including individual sensors that can either only measure the direction of the magnetic field or in addition to that the absolute value of the magnetic field. The specific embodiments depend on the desired diagnostic options, redundancy and compensation capabilities both as to interfering magnetic fields and sensor failures or non-plausible output signals of individual sensors. An evaluation unit can be provided for compensating measurement deviations.