Two-modality laser diode interferometer for high-accuracy measurement of long-range absolute distance

摘要

This paper presents a two-modality laser diode (LD) interferometer which combine as two-wavelength sinusoidal phase modulating (SPM) interferometer with a wavelength scanning interferometer (WSI) for measurement of distance over long range with high accuracy. Moreover, the intensity modulation due to power changes of LD is suppressed by appropriately choosing the modulation amplitude of injection current (IC) of LD. Triangle wave is used to modulate the IC of one LD with that of the other LD being constant at first. Thus the interferometer works as a wavelength scanning interferometer. An initial estimate of the distance can be obtained from the phase change of the interference signal. Then sinusoidal wave is used for modulating IC of both LDs to realize a two-wavelength SPM interferometer. However, the modulation of the IC of two LDs results in not only the wavelength modulation but also the intensity modulation. This intensity modulation will cause a measured phase error. To eliminate this error, SPM depths are appropriately chosen, therefore the distance to be measured can be accurately obtained with synthetic-wavelength algorithm. Experimental results indicate that an absolute distance measurement accuracy of 1 μm can be achieved over the range of 40mm to100mm.