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. 2013 Oct 10;13(10):13584-95.
doi: 10.3390/s131013584.

Design and development of a low-cost optical current sensor

Joseba Zubia  1 , Luciano Casado, Gotzon Aldabaldetreku, Alfonso Montero, Eneko Zubia, Gaizka Durana
Affiliations

Design and development of a low-cost optical current sensor

Joseba Zubia et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate the design of a low-cost optical current sensor. The sensor principle is the Faraday rotation of a light beam through a magneto-optical material, SF2, when a magnetic field is present. The prototype has a high sensitivity and a high linearity for currents ranging from 0 up to 800 A. The error of the optical fibre sensor is smaller than 1% for electric currents over 175 A.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Faraday rotation.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Geometry of our design showing the magnetic field generated by a metallic wire (yellow) around the SF2 glass rod (blue).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
(a) Schematic representation of the optical head of the low-cost current sensor. L1, L2: collimating lenses; POL: polarizer; ROD: magnetooptical rod; ANA: analyser; PD: optical photodetector. (b) Close-up view of the magnetooptical rod.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Electronic set-up for the acquisition of the optical current sensor signals.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Custom electronic hardware for the acquisition of the current sensor signals.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Test set-up of the low-cost optical current sensor (Left). Optical head detail (Right). TE: test equipment, including the electronic hardware for the acquisition inside. PS: power supply. Laptop: used to acquire all the data. Optical head: optical head of the current sensor.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Optical signal received after amplification for I = 400 A (Above). DFT of the optical signal from 0 to 500 Hz (Below).
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
(a) 50 Hz component of the normalized DFT from I = 0 A to I = 800 A. (b) 50 Hz component of the normalized DFT from I = 0 A to I = 100 A.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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