Heterodyne Optical Interferometer using Dual Mode Phase Measurement

We present a new digital phase measuring method for heterodyne optical interferometry, which providers high measuring speed up to 6 m/s with a fine displacement resolution of 0.1 nanometer. The key idea is combining two distinctive digital phase measuring techniques with mutually complementary characteristics to earth other one is counting the Doppler shift frequency counting with 20 MHz beat frequency for high-velocity measurement and the other is the synchronous phase demodulation with 2.0 kHz beat frequency for extremely fine displacement resolution. The two techniques are operated in switching mode in accordance wish the object speed in a synchronized way. Experimental results prove that the proposed dual mode phase measuring scheme is realized with a set of relatively simple electronic circuits of beat frequency shifting, heterodyne phase detection. and low-pass filtering.