Antenna - which Sensor – used to sense its Angular position?

Potentiometric Transducer

A potentiometer is a passive transducer, since it requires an external power source for its operation.
Loading characteristics of a Potentiometric Transducer
 Loading characteristics of a Potentiometric Transducer
Fig. shows the schematic diagram of a translational, single turn potentiometer.

Consider a translational potentiometer that is d.c. excited, as shown in figure above.

Let:
ei = Input Voltage; (Volt),
Rp =Total Potentiometer Resistance; (Ohm);
xt = Total travel length (xt) of a translational pot; (m).
xi = Input displacement of the slider from its 0 position ;
eo = Output voltage; (Volt).
If the distribution of the resistance with respect to translational movement is linear, then the resistance per unit length is Rp/xt.
The output voltage under ideal conditions is :

eo

Thus, under ideal circumstances, the output voltage varies linearly with displacement, as shown in Fig.
Thus, under ideal conditions the sensitivity is constant and the output is faithfully reproduced and has a linear relationship
with input. The same is true of rotational motion.

However, in practice, the output terminals of the pot are connected to a device, whose impedance is finite.
Thus, when an electrical instrument, which forms a load for the pot, and is connected across the output terminals, then
the indicated voltage is less than that given by Eqn. above.
The error, which is referred to as a loading error, is caused by the input resistance of the output device.

Let us consider the case of a translational potentiometer, as shown in Fig. above.

Let the input resistance of a meter or a recorder monitoring the output be Rm.
As explained earlier, if the resistance across the output terminals is infinite, we get a linear relationship between the output
and the input voltage.
 However, under actual conditions the resistance, Rm, is not infinite.
This causes a non-linear relationship between the output and input voltages.
Now, let us develop an “Algorithm (or a Mathematical model) for predicting the output voltage” of a loaded potentiometer.
Loading Effect:
The resistance of the parallel combination of finite load resistance and the portion of the resistance of the potentiometer
is :
 The above Eqn. shows that there exists a non-linear relationship between output voltage eo and input voltage ei.
In case, in the Eqn. if

It is evident from the above eqn. that as the ratio of Rm/Rp decreases from a large value, the non· linearity goes on increasing.
This is shown in Fig.(b) above.
Thus, in order to keep linearity, the value of Rm/RP should be as large as possible.
However, when we have to measure the output voltage with a given meter, the resistance of the potentiometer, Rp should be as
small as possible.
Hence, ERROR = [ output voltage under load - output voltage under no load].

ERROR
Except for the two end points where K=O i.e. xi=0 and K=l where xi=xt, the error is always negative.
Fig. shows a plot of the variation in error, with the slider position for different ratios of the load (meter) resistance, to
the potentiometer resistance.
The error, as indicated in Fig., is actually negative, examining the Fig. on the right,
Case:1.
The maximum error is about 12 per cent of full scale, if Rm/Rp= I.
Case:2.
This error drops down to about 1.5 per cent when Rm/Rp = 10.
.
Case:3.
For values of Rm/Rp > 10, the position of maximum error occurs in the vicinity of xi/xt = 0.67.

Maximum percentage error = єmax = 15 X (RP/Rm).

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