Incremental encoder

An incremental encoder is a linear or rotary electromechanical device that has two

output signals, A and B, which issue pulses when the device is moved.[1] Many
incremental encoders have an additional output signal, typically designated index[2]
or Z,[3] which indicates the encoder is located at a particular reference position.
Also, some encoders provide a status output (typically designated "alarm"[4]) that
indicates internal fault conditions such as a bearing failure or sensor malfunction.

An incremental encoder does not indicate absolute position; it only reports

incremental changes in position.[3] Consequently, to determine absolute position at
A rotary incremental encoder with
any particular moment, it is necessary to send the encoder signals to an incremental
shaft attached to its thru-bore
encoder interface, which in turn will "track" and report the encoder's absolute
opening
position.

Incremental encoders report position changes without being prompted to do so, and
they convey this information at data rates which are orders of magnitude faster than those of most types of absolute encoders. The
resulting, very low data latency of an incremental encoder allows it to be used to monitor the position of a high speed mechanism in
real time -- a capability lacking in most types of absolute encoders. Because of this, incremental encoders are commonly used in
applications that require precise measurement of position and velocity
.

Contents
Quadrature outputs
Resolution
Signal types
Open collector
Mechanical
Push-pull
Differential
Principal applications
Position tracking
Homing
Speed measurement
Incremental encoder interface
Line receivers
Single-ended
Differential
Input filter
Quadrature decoder
Errors
Clock multiplier
Position reporting
Triggered sampling

References

Quadrature outputs
The pulses emitted from an incremental encoder's A and B outputs
are quadrature-encoded, meaning that when the encoder is moving at
a constant velocity, the duty cycle of each pulse is 50% (i.e., the
waveform is a square wave) and there is a 90 degree phase difference
between A and B.[2] At any particular time, the phase difference will
be positive or negative depending on the encoder's direction of
Two square waves in quadrature. The direction of
movement. In the case of a rotary encoder, the phase difference is
motion is indicated by the sign of the A-B phase
+90° for clockwise rotation and -90° for counter-clockwise rotation,
angle which, in this case, is negative because A
or vice versa, depending on the device design. trails B.

The frequency of the pulses on the A or B output is directly

proportional to the encoder's velocity (rate of position change); higher frequencies indicate rapid movement, whereas lower
frequencies indicate slower speeds.[1] Static, unchanging signals are output on A and B when the encoder is motionless. In the case of
a rotary encoder, the frequency indicates the speed of the encoder's shaft rotation, and in linear encoders the frequency indicates the
speed of linear traversal.

Conceptual drawings of sensing mechanisms

Rotary encoder, with corresponding A/B Linear encoder; the R signal

signal states shown on the right indicates the encoder is located at
its reference position

Resolution
The resolution of an incremental encoder is a measure of the precision of the position information it produces. Encoder resolution is
typically specified in terms of output pulses per unit displacement. In the case of rotary encoders, resolution is specified as the
number of pulses per revolution (PPR) or cycles per revolution (CPR)[3], whereas linear encoder resolution is typically specified as
the number of pulses issued for a particular linear traversal distance (e.g., 1000 pulses per millimeter).

This is in contrast to the measurement resolution of the encoder

, which is the smallest position change that the encoder can detect. For
example, a 1000 pulse-per-millimeter linear encoder has a measurement resolution of one micrometer
.

Signal types
Incremental encoders employ various types of electronic circuits to drive (transmit) their output signals, and manufacturers often
have the ability to build a particular encoder model with any of several driver types. Commonly available driver types include open
collector, mechanical, push-pull and differential RS-422.

Open collector
Open collector drivers operate over a wide range of signal voltages and often can sink significant output current, making them useful
for directly driving current loops, opto-isolators and fiber optic transmitters.
An open-collector output must be connected to a positive DC voltage through a pull-up resistor. Some encoders provide an internal
resistor for this purpose; others do not and thus require an external pull-up resistor. In the latter case, the resistor typically is located
near the encoder interface to improve noise immunity
.

The encoder's high-level logic signal voltage is determined by the voltage applied to the pull-up resistor
, whereas the low-level output
current is determined by both the signal voltage and load resistance (including pull-up resistor). The load resistance and circuit
capacitance act together to form a low-pass filter, which stretches (increases) the signal's rise time and thus limits its maximum
frequency. For this reason, open collector drivers typically are not used when the encoder will output high frequencies.

Mechanical
Mechanical (or contact[5]) incremental encoders use sliding electrical contacts to
directly generate the A and B output signals.[2] Typically, the contacts are
electrically connected to signal ground so that the outputs will be "driven" low when
the contacts are closed, effectively making them mechanical equivalents of open
collector drivers and therefore subject to the same signal conditioning requirements
(i.e. external pull-up resistor).

The maximum output frequency is limited by the same factors that affect open-
collector outputs, and further limited by contact bounce -- which must be filtered by
the encoder interface -- and by the operating speed of the mechanical contacts, thus
making these devices impractical for high frequency operation. Furthermore, the
contacts experience mechanical wear under normal operation, which limits the
rotational life of these devices. On the other hand, mechanical encoders are
A PCB-mounted, rotary mechanical
relatively inexpensive because they have no internal, active electronics. Taken
incremental encoder
together, these attributes make mechanical encoders a good fit for low duty, low
frequency applications. For example, PCB- and panel-mounted rotary mechanical
incremental encoders are commonly used as hand-operated controls in electronic equipment.

Push-pull
Push-pull outputs (e.g., TTL) typically are used for direct interface to logic circuitry. These are well-suited to applications in which
the encoder and interface are located near each other (e.g., interconnected via printed circuit conductors or short, shielded cable runs)
and powered from a common power supply, thus avoiding exposure to electric fields, ground loops and transmission line effects that
might corrupt the signals and thereby disrupt position tracking, or worse, damage the encoder interface.

Differential
Differential RS-422 signaling is typically preferred when the encoder will output high frequencies or be located far away from the
encoder interface,[5][6] or when the encoder signals may be subjected to electric fields or common-mode voltages,[5] or when the
interface must detect connectivity problems between encoder and interface. Examples of this include CMMs and CNC machinery,
industrial robotics, factory automation, andmotion platforms used in aircraft and spacecraft simulators.

When RS-422 outputs are employed, the encoder provides a differential conductor pair for every logic output; for example, "A" and
"/A" are commonly-used designations for the active-high and active-low differential pair comprising the encoder's "A" logic output.
Consequently, the encoder interface must provide RS-422 line receivers to convert the incoming RS-422 pairs to single-ended
logic.[5]

Principal applications
Position tracking
Unlike absolute encoders, an incremental encoder does not keep
track of, nor do its outputs indicate the current encoder position; it
only reports incremental changes in position.[3] Consequently, to
determine the encoder's position at any particular moment, it is
necessary to provide external electronics which will "track" the
position. This external circuitry, which is known as an incremental
encoder interface, tracks position by counting incremental position
changes.

As it receives each report of incremental position change (indicated Differential output waveforms from an incremental
by a transition of the A or B signal), an encoder interface will take encoder
into account the phase relationship between A and B and, depending
on the sign of the phase angle, count up or down. The cumulative
"counts" value indicates the distance traveled since tracking began. This mechanism
ensures accurate position tracking in bidirectional applications and, in unidirectional
applications, prevents false counts that would otherwise result from vibration or
mechanical dithering near an AB code transition.

Often the encoder counts must be expressed in units such as meters, miles or
revolutions. In such cases, the counts must be multiplied by an appropriate constant
to convert it to the desired units. For example, in the case of a linear incremental
encoder that produces 8000 counts per millimeter of travel, the counts would be
Trackballs (such as the one shown
multiplied by 1/8000 to convert it to millimeters. Typically this multiplication is here) and electromechanical
performed by a computer which is connected to, and can read counts from, the computer mice employ two rotary
incremental encoder interface. incremental encoders to facilitate
position tracking on two axes

Homing
In order for an encoder interface to track and report absolute position, the encoder counts must be correlated to a reference position in
the mechanical system to which the encoder is attached. This is commonly done by "homing" the system, which consists of moving
the mechanical system (and encoder) until it aligns with a reference position, and then jamming the associated absolute position
counts into the encoder interface's counter. Another common method is jam a reference value into the counter upon receiving a pulse
from the encoder's "index" output, if available.

Some incremental encoder applications lack reference position detectors and therefore must implement homing by other means. For
example a computer, when using a mouse or trackball pointing device, typically will home the device by assuming a central, initial
screen position, and jamming the corresponding counts into the X and Y position counters.

Speed measurement
Incremental encoders are commonly used to measure the speed of mechanical systems. This may be done for monitoring purposes or
to provide feedback formotion control, or both.[5] Widespread applications of this include speed control ofradar antenna rotation and
material conveyors, and motion control inrobotics, CMM and CNC machines.

Incremental encoder interfaces are primarily concerned with tracking mechanical displacement and usually do not directly measure
speed. Consequently, speed must be indirectly measured, either by timing the A or B pulse width (or cycle time) or by counting
pulses.[2] In the latter case, the pulses are typically counted by an encoder interface and speed is derived from the resulting position
information.
In many cases, this derivation is performed by software which is executing on a
computer. Under the direction of the software, the computer — which has access to
the encoder interface — will read the position counts from the interface (i.e.,
"sample" the counts) and then, at some later time, sample the counts again. Each
sample is effectively an ordered pair (C,T) in which C is the position counts and T is
the time when the sample was acquired. Using the two acquired samples, (C0,T0)
and (C1,T1), the average speed is then calculated: speed = (C1 - C0) / (T1 - T0).

The resulting "raw" speed value is expressed as counts per unit time (e.g., counts per
second). In practice, however, it is often necessary to express the speed in Mechanical conveyors such as this
standardized units (e.g., meters/second, revolutions/minute, miles/hour). In such typically use rotary incremental
encoders as feedback devices for
cases, the software will take into account the relationship between counts and
closed-loop speed control
desired distance units, as well as the ratio of the sampling period to desired time
units, and translate the raw speed accordingly. For example, in the case of a rotary
incremental encoder that produces 4096 counts per revolution, which is being
sampled once per second, the software would multiply the raw speed by 60/4096 to
convert it to revolutions/minute.

When measuring speed in this way, the measurement resolution is proportional to

both the encoder resolution and the sampling period (the elapsed time between the
two samples); measurement resolution will become higher as the sampling period
increases.[2] Commercial marine radar antenna

Incremental encoder interface

An incremental encoder interfaceis an electronic circuit that receives signals from
an incremental encoder, processes the signals to produce absolute position and other
information, and makes the resulting information available to external circuitry
.

Incremental encoder interfaces are implemented in a variety of ways, including as

ASICs, as IP blocks within FPGAs, as dedicated peripheral interfaces in
microcontrollers and, when high count rates are not required, as software managed
bit-bang interfaces.

Regardless of the implementation, the interface must sample the encoder's A and B
An FPGA-based, 6-axis incremental
output signals frequently enough to detect every AB state change before the next
encoder interface (left to right: input
state change occurs. Upon detecting a state change, it will increment or decrement connectors for encoder signals; RS-
the position counts based on whether A leads or trails B. This is typically done by 422 line receivers; FPGA)
storing a copy of the previous AB state and, upon state change, using the current and
previous AB states to determine movement direction.

Line receivers

Single-ended
Incremental encoder interfaces typically employ Schmitt trigger inputs to receive signals from encoders that have single-ended (e.g.,
push-pull, open collector) outputs. This type of line receiver inherently rejects low-level noise (by means of its input hysteresis) and
protects downstream circuitry from invalid (and possibly destructive) logic signal levels.

Differential
In mission-critical systems, an encoder interface may be required to detect loss of input signals due to encoder power loss or signal
driver failure, cable fault or cable disconnect. This is usually accomplished by using an encoder that has RS-422 outputs, and by
employing enhanced RS-422 line receivers in the encoder interface which sense the absence of driven input signals and report this
condition via an "open-circuit" status output. In normal operation, glitches (brief pulses) may appear on the status outputs during
input state transitions. Typically, the encoder interface will filter the status signals to prevent these glitches from being erroneously
interpreted as faults. Depending on the interface, subsequent processing may include generating an interrupt request upon loss of
receiver signal, and forwarding fault signals to the application for error logging or failure analysis.

Input filter
In many cases an encoder interface must filter the incoming encoder signals before further processing them. This may be required to
reject low-level noise and brief, large-amplitude noise spikes commonly found in motor applications[7] and, in the case of
mechanical-type encoders, to debounce A and B to avoid count errors due to mechanical contact bounce.

Hardware-based interfaces often provide programmable filters for the encoder signals, which provide a wide range of filter settings
and thus allow them to debounce contacts or suppress transients resulting from noise or slowly slewing signals, as needed. In bit-bang
interfaces, A and B typically are connected toGPIOs that are sampled (via polling or edge interrupts) and debounced by software.

Quadrature decoder
Incremental encoder interfaces
commonly use a quadrature decoder to
convert the A and B signals into the
direction and count enable (clock
enable) signals needed for controlling a
synchronous, bidirectional (up- and
down-counting) binary counter.

Typically, a quadrature decoder is A quadrature decoder converts the A and B signals from an incremental
implemented as a finite-state machine encoder into direction and count enable signals, which are used to control a
synchronous up/down counter
(FSM) which simultaneously samples
the A and B signals and thus produces
amalgamate "AB" samples. As each new AB sample is acquired, the FSM will store the previous AB sample for later analysis. The
FSM evaluates the differences between the new and previous AB states and generates direction and count enable signals as
appropriate for the detected AB state sequence.[7]

In any two consecutive AB samples, the logic state of A or B may change or both states may remain unchanged, but in normal
operation the A and B states will never both change. When neither A nor B changes, the quadrature decoder assumes the encoder has
not moved and so it negates its count enable output, thereby causing the counts to remain unchanged. When just A or B changes
state, the quadrature decoder assumes the encoder has moved one increment of its measurement resolution and, accordingly, it may
assert its count enable output to allow the counts to change, and assert or negate its direction output to cause the counts to increment
or decrement (or vice versa).

Errors
If both the A and B logic states change in consecutive AB samples, the clock decoder has no way of determining how many
increments, or in what direction the encoder has moved. This can happen if the encoder speed is too fast for the quadrature decoder to
process (i.e., the rate of AB state changes exceeds the quadrature decoder's sampling rate; see Nyquist rate) or if the A or B signal is
noisy.
In most Quadrature decoder state table
encoder
AB state Outputs
applications
Description CE
this is a Previous Current DIR ERR
catastrophic x1 x2 x4
event Moved one increment in 00 10 1 1
because the "forward" direction
(A leads B) 10 11 0
counter no 1
11 01 1
longer
provides an 01 00 0
0 1
accurate Moved one increment in 00 01 0
indication "reverse" direction
(B leads A) 01 11 1
of encoder 0 0
11 10 0
position.
10 00 1 1
No detected movement 00 00
01 01
10 10
11 11
0 X
Moved an indeterminate 00 11
number of increments
01 10
1
10 01
11 00

Consequently, many quadrature decoders output an additional error signal which is asserted when the A and B states change
simultaneously. Due to the severity and time-sensitive nature of this condition, the error signal is often connected to an interrupt
request.

Clock multiplier
A quadrature decoder does not necessarily allow the counts to change for every incremental position change. When a decoder detects
an incremental position change (due to a transition of A or B, but not both), it may allow the counts to change or it may inhibit
counting, depending on the AB state transition and the decoder'sclock multiplier.

The clock multiplier of a quadrature decoder is so named because it results in a count rate which is a multiple of the A or B pulse
frequency. Depending on the decoder's design, the clock multiplier may be hardwired into the design or it may be run-time
configurable via input signals.

The clock multiplier value may be one, two or four (typically designated "x1", "x2" and "x4", or "1x", "2x" and "4x"[8]). In the case
of a x4 multiplier, the counts will change for every AB state change, thereby resulting in a count rate equal to four times the A or B
frequency. The x2 and x1 multipliers allow the counts to change on some, but not all AB state changes, as shown in the quadrature
decoder state table above (note: this table shows one of several possible implementations for x2 and x1 multipliers; other
implementations may enable counting at different AB transitions).

Position reporting
From an application's perspective, the fundamental purpose of an incremental encoder interface is to report position information on
demand. Depending on the application, this may be as simple as allowing the computer to read the position counter at any time. To
facilitate this, an encoder interface will typically employ a sample register. When the computer demands position information, the
interface will sample the position counter (i.e., copy the current position counts to the sample register) and then the computer will
read the counts from the sample register. This mechanism results in atomic operation and thus ensures the integrity of the sample
[1]
data, which might otherwise be at risk (e.g., if the sample size exceeds the computer's word size).

Triggered sampling
At higher encoder speeds and resolutions, the computer may not be able to programatically (via programmed I/O) acquire position
information with adequate timing precision. To overcome this limitation, it is common for an incremental encoder interface to
implement hardware-triggered sampling, which enables it to sample the position counter at precisely-controlled times as dictated by a
trigger input signal.[1] This is important when the position must be sampled at particular times or in response to physical events, and
essential in applications such as multi-axis motion control and CMM, in which the position counters of multiple encoder interfaces
(one per axis) must be simultaneously sampled.

Hardware-triggered sampling is usually asynchronous with respect to software execution. Consequently, when the position counter is
sampled in response to a trigger signal, the computer must be notified (typically via interrupt) that a sample is available. Often, the
computer also must know when the sample was acquired and, if the interface has multiple trigger inputs, which signal triggered the
sample acquisition. To satisfy these requirements, the interface typically will include a timestamp and trigger information in every
sample.

Consecutive sampling triggers may occur faster than the computer can process the resulting samples. When this happens, the
information in the sample register will be overwritten before it can be read by the computer, resulting in data loss. To avoid this
problem, some incremental encoder interfaces provide a FIFO buffer for samples.[1] As each sample is acquired, it is stored in the
FIFO. When the computer demands a sample, it is allowed to read the oldest sample in the FIFO.

References
1. Sensoray. "Introduction to Incremental Encoders"(http://www.sensoray.com/support/appnotes/encoders.htm).
Retrieved 18 July 2018.
2. Craig, K. "Optical Encoders" (http://engineering.nyu.edu/mechatronics/Control_Lab/Criag/Craig_RPI/SenActinMech
a/S&A_Optical_Encoders.pdf)(PDF). Retrieved 25 July 2018.
3. "The Basics of How an Encoder Works" (http://encoder.com/core/files/encoder/uploads/files/WP-2011.pdf) (PDF).
Encoder Products Company. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
4. "Encoder Basics" (https://ics.as/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Hengstler-Encoder-basics.pdf)
(PDF). ICS A/S.
5. "Encoder Primer" (http://irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/~tcs3/tcs3/0306_conceptual_design/Docs/05_Encoders/encoder_prim
er.pdf) (PDF). NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. Retrieved
17 August 2018.
6. "3 Steps to Specifying the Correct Encoder Output yTpe" (http://encoder.com/blog/white-papers-other-resources/3-st
eps-to-specifying-the-correct-encoder-output-type/)
. Encoder Products. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
7. "Quadrature Decoder/Counter Interface ICs"(http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/courses/cs54-2001s/pdf/hctl2000.pdf)
(PDF). Agilent Technologies. Retrieved 20 August 2018.
8. "Addressing encoder error"(https://www.machinedesign.com/archive/addressing-encoder-error). Machine Design.
Retrieved 20 August 2018.

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