Design and Development of a Novel High Resolution Absolute Rotary Encoder System Based on Affine n-digit N-ary Gray Code

This paper presents a new type of absolute rotary encoder system based on the affine n-digit N-ary gray code. A brief comparison of the existing encoder systems is carried out in terms of resolution, encoding and decoding principles and number of sensor heads needed. Using the proposed method, two different types of encoder disks are designed, namely, color-coded disk and grayscale coded disk. The designed coded disk pattern is used to manufacture 3 digit 3 ary and 2 digit 5 ary grayscale coded disks respectively. The manufactured disk is used with the light emitter and photodetector assembly to design the entire encode system. Experimental analysis is done on the designed prototype with LabVIEW platform for data acquisition. A comparison of the designed system is done with the traditional binary gray code encoder system in terms of resolution, disk diameter, number of tracks and data acquisition system. The resolution of the manufactured system is 3 times higher than the conventional system. Also, for a 5 digit 5 ary coded encoder system, a resolution approximately 100 times better than the conventional binary system can be achieved. In general, the proposed encoder system gives $(N/2)^n$ times better resolution compared with the traditional gray coded disk. The miniaturization in diameter of the coded disk can be achieved compared to the conventional binary systems.