Electronic Scheme for Computing Inverse-Cosine and its Application to a GMR Based Angle Sensor

This paper presents a new, simple but effective, electronic method to obtain inverse-cosine of an electrical variable. The proposed method is very useful for linearization of sensors whose output is a cosine or sine function of the physical quantity being sensed. The inverse-cosine of the variable is obtained by comparing it with a reference sinusoidal wave. The proposed method is easy to implement using electronic components. Using the new technique, a giant magneto-resistance-based angle sensor that provides an output linearly proportional to the angle being sensed has been developed, and the details are reported in this paper. A prototype of the angle sensor has been built, and the practicality of the new method has been tested successfully. The developed sensor provides a linear output for a range of 0° to 180°. The worst case error was found to be less than 0.35° for a range of 10°-170°.