Sensors, Vol. 19, Pages 4892: Full Digital Processing System of Photoelectric Encoder (Sensors)

A photoelectric signal, output by a photoelectric receiver, may detrimentally change after the photoelectric encoder is used for a period of time or when the environment changes; this will directly affect the accuracy of the encoder and lead to fatal errors in the encoder. To maintain its high accuracy, we propose an encoder that can work in a variety of environments and that adopts full digital processing. A signal current that travels from the receiver of a photoelectric encoder is converted into a voltage signal via current limiting resistance. All signals are directly processed in the data processor component of the system. The encoder converts all the signals into its normalized counterpart. Then, the angle of the encoder is calculated using the normalized value. The calculated encoder angle compensates for any error. The final encoder angle is obtained, and the encoder angle is output accordingly. Experiments show that this method can greatly reduce the encoder’s volume. This method also reduces the encoder error from 167 arcseconds to 53 arcseconds. The encoder can still maintain a high accuracy during environmental changes, especially in harsh environments where there are higher accuracy requirements.