sensors

Communication
A New Kind of Absolute Magnetic Encoder
Tong Feng , Wenlu Chen, Jinji Qiu and Shuanghui Hao *

School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China;

ariahoshi.tf@gmail.com (T.F.); chenwenlu2021@163.com (W.C.); 18846446691@163.com (J.Q.)
* Correspondence: haoshuanghui@hit.edu.cn

Abstract: To fulfill the requirement of fields such as robotics, aviation, and special machining, motors
with quill shafts or outer rotors have been used. For these special motors, the photoelectric encoder’s
volume is normally too big and easy to be polluted by oil or dust; magnetic encoder normally has
poor accuracy, and alnico piece may not provide enough magnetic field coverage area. The aim of
this essay is to find a new structure of magnetic encoder to improve the precision and magnetic field
coverage area. By using two multi-pole alnico rings with a different number of pole pairs to provide
a magnetic field, the coverage area could be improved. The position differences between two alnicos
pole positions are used to calculate absolute angle value, so the accuracy of the encoder could be
absolute and no less than that of a combined magnetic encoder with the same number of pole pairs.
A special algorithm is proposed for decoding. This new kind of magnetic encoder could be used on
special motors with quill shafts or outer rotors. Its volume and weight are less than the photoelectric
encoder and have better performance on antipollution. The alnico ring is easy to modify to suit the
structure of the motor.



Keywords: absolute angular displacement sensor; Hall-effect sensor; combined magnetic encoder;

 multi-pole alnico magnet
Citation: Feng, T.; Chen, W.; Qiu, J.;
Hao, S. A New Kind of Absolute
Magnetic Encoder. Sensors 2021, 21,
3095. https://doi.org/10.3390/ 1. Introduction
s21093095 Servo motor systems are widely used nowadays. In fields such as robotics, aviation,
and special machining, the system needs to be miniaturized and lightweight owing to
Academic Editor: Jose
the requirements of the working environment. Motors with quill shafts or outer rotors
A Antonino-Daviu
have been proposed and used to meet these needs. To fulfill the required control accuracy,
a suitable angular displacement sensor needs to be used in the system. Two kinds of
Received: 3 March 2021
sensors commonly used in servo motor systems are the photoelectric encoder and magnetic
Accepted: 26 April 2021
Published: 29 April 2021
encoder. A photoelectric encoder has high accuracy but normally has a relatively big
size and high cost and performs poorly in an environment with vibration disturbance or
low cleanliness. A magnetic encoder is cheaper and smaller and is strongly resistant to
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
pollution and disturbance, but its accuracy is poorer.
published maps and institutional affil-
Research on photoelectric encoders has mainly focused on acclimatization and reduc-
iations. ing volume. Zhao transformed the signal current from the encoder0 s receiver into a signal
voltage and then processed the signal through other chips, which reduced the effects of
environmental temperature and working time on the light source and receiver [1,2]. To
reduce the volume, Wang and Xi used single-ring coding to engrave the code disk of the
photoelectric encoder, making the code disk smaller [3,4]. Wang also created a metal code
Copyright: © 2021 by the authors.
disk to improve the impact resistance of the encoder [3]. Yu used an image detector instead
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
with a traditional moiré fringe method and designed a small photographic encoder with a
distributed under the terms and
diameter of 50 mm [5].
conditions of the Creative Commons For a magnetic encoder, the research emphasis has mainly been on increasing the
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// encoder’s accuracy and resolution and reducing the effects of disturbance. The method of
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ the look-up table is often used in early research. Nakano used CMOS magnetic sensors
4.0/). to detect magnetic fields, then created a table of sensors offset and used it to correct the

Sensors 2021, 21, 3095. https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093095 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors

Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 2 of 11

final output [6]. Hao created a table of the relationship between Hall sensors’ output and
photoelectric encoder’s output for calibration, increased the accuracy of the encoder to 13-
bits [7]. This method is still used in recent research. Park used a gear system to combine the
main shaft with some subshafts, and the signals from alnicos on subshafts could be broken
to subdivide the signal from the alnico of the main shaft [8]. Then Nguyen proposed
a self-referencing lookup-table algorithm to improve the accuracy of this encoder [9].
Another method is improving the structure of the encoder. Pavel designed an encoder
with a Hall ring and a specially designed permanent magnet to achieve ± 0.1 degrees
without calibration [10]. Zhang used coils stimulated by the external current to generate
the magnetic field, then used two groups of secondary windings to detect the change of
magnetic field and calculate angular by signal processing circuit [11]. Yamamoto designed
a magnetic encoder with an eccentric structure, using four linear Hall sensors to receive
signals from the eccentrically rotating multi-pole alnico and then calculate the absolute
angle through a least-squares algorithm [12]. Wang built a relationship between the time
pulse and magnetic signal from magnetoresistance sensors and then calculated the angle
by counting the time pulse [13]. Tran used a combined encoder and designed an algorithm
based on an adaptive linear neural network to reduce the effects of noise and offset [14].
A motor with a quill shaft always has a relatively large radial dimension. A photoelec-
tric encoder needs more grating to be processed and has a higher cost. From the studies
above, it is evident that the oil and dust pollution of the light source and receiver still
has not been solved. For a magnetic encoder, the magnetic field from the normal alnico
has a saddle-type distortion and limited coverage area. To cover the end face of a quill
shaft motor, the alnico needs to be larger but will be easy to break owing to stress. Ripka
used a coil as a magnetic field source with a working distance of 20 m, but the accuracy
was poor [15]. Therefore, finding a suitable encoder for a motor with a quill shaft is an
important problem to research.
This paper proposes a new kind of magnetic encoder and a method to determine its
absolute angle. This encoder uses alnico rings instead of permanent magnet sheets, so it
is more suitable for a motor with a quill shaft than other magnet encoders. By using the
position relationship between outer and inner alnico rings to calculate the angular value,
the method could eliminate the effects of processing and installing. The structure of this
encoder is flexible, and the algorithm is simple.

2. Principle of Angle Measurement

Figure 1 shows the schematic of the magnetic encoder’s signal generation principle.
Two multi-pole alnico rings are installed on a motor’s rotary shaft coaxially and rotate
with it, outputting a magnetic signal that correlates with angle. Four Hall linear sensors
are installed around alnicos at equal spacings. These sensors collect a magnetic signal
and then send it to the MCU. Finally, the absolute angle can be calculated after the MCU
is processed.

Figure 1. Schematic of the magnetic encoder’s signal generation principle.

Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 3 of 11

Figure 2 is a simplified sketch of the magnetic encoder. The dark part is a north pole,
and the light part is a south pole, and a north pole and a south pole compose a pole pair.
The angle 0◦ is set as the start point. When the alnico rotates to point A, the absolute angle
of A can be calculated via
360◦ θ
θ = ( Ni − 1) × + i (1)
m m
where
θ is the absolute angle of point A;
Ni is the pole position, meaning which pair of poles point A is at;
θi is the angle in a single cycle, which is the angle of point A at the current pole pair;
m is the number of pole pairs.

Figure 2. Simplified sketch of the magnetic encoder.

Two linear Hall sensors are installed around each alnico, and the phase angle between
them is set as 90◦ . Then θi can be calculated with the arctangent algorithm:

VA
θi = arctan (2)
VB

where VA and VB are the voltage signals from Hall sensors A and B, respectively.
The arctangent range is [−90◦ ,90◦ ], so θi from Formula (2) cannot be directly used to
calculate the absolute angle. Owing to the relative magnitudes of VA and VB , the angular
range (0◦ , 360◦ ) can be divided into eight intervals [12]. The angle in each interval can then
be calculated via the corresponding formula.
After calculating the angle in a single cycle of θi , identifying Ni is the key to calculate
the absolute angle.

3. Encoding Principle with Two Multi-Pole Alnicos

Two multi-pole alnicos are used in the encoder. Their positions relative to each other
can be used to determine a unique characteristic for each pair of poles on the outer alnico.
If each point in each pair of poles on the outer alnico in Figure 2 has a non-redundant
corresponding point on the inner alnico, then the inner signal can be used as the unique
characteristic to identify which pair of poles the outer signal is from.
However, Figure 3 shows that when the outer alnico has four pairs of poles, and the
inner alnico has two, the position relationship between the outer first pole pair and inner
alnico is the same as that of the outer third pole pair and inner alnico, so the signal cannot
be used to identify a pole pair. Therefore, the uniqueness of the position relationship needs
to be proved first.
Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 4 of 11

Figure 3. Alnicos with the same position relationship.

Consider two random points, i1 and i2, on the outer alnico and their corresponding
points, j1 and j2, on the inner alnico. The pole positions of these points are Ni1 , Ni2 , Nj1 ,
and Nj2 . The single-cycle angles of the points are θi1 , θi2 , θ j1 , and θ j2 and the absolute
angles of i1 and i2 are θ1 and θ2 . The difference in angle between the initial position of
the north pole of pole-pair x on the outer alnico and the initial position of the north pole
of pole-pair x on the inner alnico is θ x . Figure 4 shows a simplified sketch of the encoder.
Using Formula (1), the following equations can be obtained:

360◦ 360◦
(
θ j1
θi1
θ1 = ( Ni1 − 1) × m + m = Nj1 − 1 × n + n + θx
(3)
360◦ 360◦ θ j2
θi2

θ2 = ( Ni2 − 1) × m + m = Nj2 − 1 × n + n + θx

Figure 4. Simplified sketch of the magnetic encoder with two random points.

It can be seen that θ1 6= θ2 when θi1 6= θi2 or θ j1 6= θ j2 . When Ni1 =Ni2 , points i1 and
i2 are in the same cycle, which implies that θi1 6= θi2 . Similarly, θ j1 6= θ j2 when Nj1 =Nj2 .
Therefore, the uniqueness of the position relationship can be proved if a condition can be
found that satisfies θ1 6= θ2 when Ni1 6= Ni2 and Nj1 6= Nj2 .
Assume that θi1 = θi2 and θ j1 = θ j2 when Ni1 6= Ni2 and Nj1 6= Nj2 . Subtracting one
equation in Formula (3) from the other, the following formula can be obtained:

( Ni1 − Ni2 ) m

= (4)
Nj1 − Nj2 n
Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 5 of 11

Given that Ni ≤ m, it can be seen that when m and n are coprime, Formula (4) cannot
be satisfied. Therefore, the position relationship is unique when the two alnicos have a
coprime number of pole pairs.
Formula (3) can be transformed into the following formula:

360◦ 360◦
( θ j1

θi1
m − n = Nj1 − 1 × n − ( Ni1 − 1) × m + θx
(5)
θ j2 360◦ 360◦
θi2

m − n = Nj2 − 1 × n − ( Ni2 − 1) × m + θx

θ
Setting λ = mθi
− nj , it can be seen that for two random points on the outer alnico,
λ1 6= λ2 when m and n are coprime. Because the values of m, n, and θ x are defined when
the encoder is processed, the amount of λ is limited and can be used as a characteristic
θ
θi
value. Therefore, m − nj can be used to calculate λ, λ can be used to determine Ni , and
Formula (1) can be used to calculate θ.

4. Calculation of Characteristic Value

When the encoder has been processed, the positions of the outer and inner alnicos
relative to each other are determined. Then the characteristic value can be calculated.
Figure 5 is the curve of the characteristic value from an encoder with 16 pole pairs on
the outer alnico and seven pole pairs on the inner. Using the value to calculate the angle
ensures absoluteness. However, in practical work, the corresponding interval of each value
has not been determined at this time owing to the unknown installation position error θ x ,
which means the pole position corresponding to the value cannot be determined.

Figure 5. Calculated characteristic value.

From Formula (1), the pole position Ni can be calculated when the absolute angle θ and
single-cycle angle θi are known. To improve the accuracy of the encoder, a high-accuracy
photoelectric encoder will be used to output the absolute angle for calibration. Then the pole
position can be calculated, and the relationship between the pole position and characteristic
value can be determined by using pole position to calculate characteristic value.
In practical work, the relationship between the absolute angle and single-cycle angle
cannot be strict owing to the error, so the calculated pole position may not be accurate. The
algorithm below is proposed to solve the problem.
1. Use the ideal absolute angle to simulate the output of the photoelectric encoder. Set
the first sample point as 0◦ , the last sample point as 360◦ , and the step as 0.01◦ . Then
the relationship between the absolute and single-cycle angles of the outer alnico is as
shown in Figure 6.
2. Divide the sample points in a whole cycle into M equal intervals. The value of M
is based on the number of pole pairs m and number of sample points to make sure
M > m and each interval has enough sample points. Figure 6 is a partial curve for
M = 256.
Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 6 of 11

3. Use the value of the first sample point θ Mi in interval i to subtract the value of the first
sample point θ Mi−1 in interval i − 1. Then M − 1 differences Di are obtained. Figure 7
shows a partial curve of Di and its corresponding intervals.
4. Set the pole position of the first sample point in the first interval equals to m, then
successively judge whether the Di of subsequent intervals is less than 0. If Di > 0,
then the pole position has not changed between the previous and current intervals,
so the pole position of the current interval is the same as that of the previous one.
If Di < 0, then the pole position has changed at some point between these two
intervals, and the pole position of the current interval is that of the previous one plus
1. When the pole position N is greater than m, set it as 1. In Figure 7, D106 represents
the situation when Di > 0, and D109 represents Di < 0. After this processing, the
relationship between intervals and pole positions can be determined preliminarily.
Figure 8 shows the relationship between partial intervals and pole positions. There is
still an error when M = 108.
5. Use the pole position of interval i to subtract the pole position of interval i − 1 to
obtain difference τi , and the pole position of the first interval to subtract the pole
position of interval M to obtain difference τ1 . Then M differences are obtained, as
shown in Figure 9.
6. Match each difference with corresponding intervals, then find out the intervals with
differences of 1 or 1 − m; these intervals include sample points when the pole position
changes. Combine each of these intervals with its previous one. Then m intervals are
obtained. These intervals compose a set T.
7. If the interval of a sample point does not belong to T, there will be no pole position
change in the interval. Then the pole position of the point is the same as that of the
interval. If the interval of a sample point belongs to T, then the point may be the
intersection of pole positions. If the angle of the point is greater than 180◦ , its pole
position is 1 less than that of the interval; if the angle of the point is greater than 180◦ ,
then its pole position is the same as that of the interval. After the processing, the
corresponding relationship between the single-cycle angle and pole position can be
determined. The partial result is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 6. Relationship between ideal angle and single-cycle angle of outer alnico.

Figure 7. Partial curve with intervals.

Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 7 of 11

Figure 8. Primary corresponding relationship between intervals and pole positions.

Figure 9. Differences of all intervals.

Figure 10. Relationship between single-cycle angle and pole position.

According to Formula (5), θ x is needed to build the relationship between the charac-
teristic value and pole position. Transforming Formula (5) gives

θ x = ( N2 − 1)θn − ( N1 − 1)θm − λ∗ (6)

Calculating the average of the characteristic value λ∗ and putting it into Formula (6)
gives the approximate value of θ x . In this simulation, N1 = 16, N2 = 7, and θ x = −24.04◦ .
Formula (5) can be written as

θi1 θ
λ= − i2 = N2 θn − N1 θm + θ x + θm − θn (7)
m n
If θ x is brought into Formula (7), then the relationship between the characteristic value
and pole position can be built as shown in Table 1.
Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 8 of 11

Table 1. Characteristic values and corresponding outer alnico pole positions.

Pole Characteristic Pole Characteristic Pole Characteristic

Position N Value λ Position N Value λ Position N Value λ
1 −24.04 6 17.7457 12 −14.3971
2 −46.54 7 −4.7543 13 −36.8971
2 4.8886 8 −27.3543 13 14.5314
3 −17.6114 9 −49.7543 14 −7.9686
4 −40.1114 9 1.6743 15 −30.4686
4 11.3171 10 −20.8257 15 20.6900
5 −11.1829 11 −43.3257 16 −1.54
6 −33.6829 11 8.1029

5. Encoder Simulation
The processing flow of the magnetic signal is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11. Processing of absolute angle calculation based on characteristic value.

We perform a Maxwell simulation of the magnetic signal. The step is 0.01◦ , anticlock-
wise is the positive direction, and 36,000 points are taken in the range 0–360◦ as the raw
signal. These points can be thought of as the signal from an alnico rotating clockwise at
low speed. The outer alnico has 16 pole pairs, and the inner alnico has 7.
For the simulation, we use an A1326LLHLX-2-T linear Hall sensor from Allegro. The
main characteristic parameters of this sensor are shown in Table 2. When the rotor rotates,
the linear Hall sensor could turn the change of magnetic field intensity to the change of
voltage, then send the voltage signal to MCU to calculate angular. The rotor’s planning
speed is 2000 rpm, so this linear Hall sensor’s performance is sufficient.

Table 2. The main characteristic parameters of the linear Hall sensor.

Rated Working Internal Bandwidth Magnetic Sensitivity Output Referred

Model Number
Voltage (V) (kHz) Coefficient (mV/G) Noise (mV)
A1326LLHLX-2-T 5 17 4.750~5.250 3.5

The position of the Hall sensors is the start point, the sampling points are taken as the
abscissa, and the magnetic field intensity is the ordinate. Figure 12 shows the signals of
Hall sensors H1 and H2 around the outer alnico, and Figure 13 shows the signals of Hall
Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 9 of 11

sensors H3 and H4 around the inner alnico. The solid curves are the signals of H1 and H3,
and the dashed curves are those of H2 and H4.

Figure 12. Signals from Hall sensors of outer alnico.

Figure 13. Signals from Hall sensors of inner alnico.

These signals are put into the simulation platform. Figures 14 and 15 show the
decoding results from the arctangent algorithm. The outer alnico has 16 groups of angle
values from 0◦ to 360◦ , and the inner has seven groups of angle values from 0◦ to 360◦ , in
accord with the setting of the outer and inner alnicos.

Figure 14. Decoding result for outer alnico.

Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 10 of 11

Figure 15. Decoding result for inner alnico.

Table 1 shows the calculated characteristic value and its relationship with pole position.
Then the absolute angle can be calculated through Formula (1). Figure 16 shows the
corresponding relationship between sample points and pole positions, and Figure 17 shows
the calculated absolute angle. Because the pole position of the first sample point is set at 16,
the start point of the absolute angle in Figure 17 is not zero.

Figure 16. Decoding result.

Figure 17. Calculated angle.

Sensors 2021, 21, 3095 11 of 11

6. Conclusions
To fulfill the requirements of a motor with a large radial dimension, this paper has
presented the theory of a new combined magnetic encoder with two multi-pole alnico rings.
First, it was proved that the position relationship between two alnicos is unique when the
alnicos each have a coprime number of pole pairs so that the signal of the inner alnico can
be used to identify the pole position of the outer alnico. Then a method of calculating the
characteristic value was designed, and this value was used to calculate the absolute angle.
Finally, the encoding and decoding theory was verified through simulation.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, S.H.; methodology, T.F. and W.C.; software, W.C. and J.Q.;
validation, T.F., W.C. and J.Q.; formal analysis, J.Q.; investigation, T.F.; resources, T.F.; data curation,
T.F., W.C. and J.Q.; writing—original draft preparation, T.F.; writing—review and editing, T.F. and
S.H.; supervision, S.H.; project administration, T.F. and S.H. All authors have read and agreed to the
published version of the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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