Timer-Based Demodulator for AM Sensor Signals Applied to an Inductive Displacement Sensor

This paper proposes a novel method for demodulating low-frequency amplitude-modulated (AM) signals provided by sensors. The method relies on a digital timer that carries out the demodulation and digitization simultaneously, without requiring a rectifier, a mixer, a low-pass filter, or an analog-to-digital converter. This timer-based demodulator extracts the amplitude of the AM signal by measuring the period of a reference signal that is altered by the AM signal itself. The period measurement undergoes a deviation that carries information about the amplitude of the AM signal. The feasibility and also the limitations, such as the nonlinearity and aliasing effects, of this novel demodulator are proved theoretically and experimentally. The concept is also applied to measure an inductive displacement sensor in a range of ±30 mm. A nonlinearity error of 0.5% full-scale span and a resolution of 9 bits are achieved for an overall measuring time of 100 ms.