High-speed, High-resolution Phase Measuring Technique for Heterodyne Displacement Measuring Interferometers.

헤테로다인 변위 측정 간섭계의 고속, 고분해능 위상 측정

One of the ever-increasing demands on the performances of heterodyne interferometers is to improve the measurement resolution, of which current state-of-the-art reaches the region of sub-nanometers. We propose a new scheme of phase-measuring electronics that reduces the measurement resolution without further increase in clock speed. Our scheme adopts a super-heterodyne technique that lowers the original beat frequency to a level of 1 MHz by mixing it with electrically generated reference signal. The technique enables us to measure the phase of Doppler shift with a resolution of 1.58 nanometer at a sampling rate of 1 MHz. To avoid the undesirable decrease in the maximum measurable speed caused by the lowered beat frequency, a special from of frequency up-down counting technique is combined with the super-heterodyning. This alloys performing required phase unwrapping simply by using programmable digital gates without 2$\pi$ ambiguities up to the maximum velocity of 2.35 m/s.