Assay of a Resistive Displacement Transducer With a Floating Wiper

A resistive type displacement transducer that employs a floating (contactless) wiper and a relaxation oscillator-based signal conditioning circuit is presented here. The proposed transducer provides an output that is linear to the displacement of the floating wiper. Since, only a couple of dc reference voltages influence the output of the proposed transducer, a good degree of linearity and accuracy is easily obtained just by employing a couple of precision dc voltages. The simulation studies and the test results on a prototype unit presented here establishes the efficacy of the proffered method. The detailed analysis of the proposed transducer, given in here, identifies the pitfalls to be avoided while designing the sensor and the signal conditioning circuitry.