Novel Method for Determining Absolute Position Information From Magnetic Patterns

In this paper, a new method for achieving absolute position information is proposed. As opposed to the common approach of matching magnetoresistive (MR) sensors to specific pole pitch patterns on medium, this paper validates the possibility of mismatching between the two with the same element spacing in MR sensors over pole pitch variation from 1.1 to 1.3 mm in two-row magnetic patterns. The first row is the incremental row, which has the same 1 mm pole pitch as the sensor. The second row serves as the absolute row with the tweaked pole pitch pattern. With different pole pitches in the two rows, an offset between each pole exists before the two different pole pitches reach their common multiple. Through analyzing Lissajous profiles resulted from both rows, it is found that the relation between two rows on each position is unique, and hence can be used as a mean to determine absolute position.