Development of a wireless angle sensor based on the directional radiation pattern of antennas

The directional radiation pattern of antennas is exploited to develop a high-speed wireless absolute angle measurement device. The system involves deployment of one antenna on a rotating body as the angle measurement sensor. This sensor antenna receives signals from two interrogation antennas positioned with an angular offset on a static frame of reference. The directional radiation pattern of the antennas is used to analyze the received signal strength and estimate the angle between the static and rotating frames. The signals received by the sensor antenna are analyzed using standard inexpensive hardware capable of miniaturization on a printed circuit board/chip. The key advantages of this sensor are absolute angle detection, wireless operation, high sampling rate and inexpensive fabrication. Detailed experimental results are presented that evaluate the feasibility of this new sensing concept. Experiments show that the sensor achieves better than 0.5° accuracy for static angle measurements and an accuracy of the order of 1.6° for dynamic motion measurements. An estimator that combines a gyroscope together with the developed angle sensor is then presented. The estimator is able to achieve drift-free estimates with accuracy better than 0.2° for static and 0.8° for dynamic measurements.