Development of a low cost sensor for measuring angle of irradiation

We proposed a novel sensor design mechanism that leads to a novel sensor to measure the angle of irradiation of light relative to a predefined axis. We incorporated physical principles such as the photovoltaic effect into mathematical tools such as linear regression method, leading to a grey box model in which errors in manufacturing and assembly were compensated. A compact and low cost sensor that consisted of photodiodes, aluminium housing, electronic amplifiers, low pass filters and a microcontroller was created to test the design mechanism and the proposed modelling method. It was found that the sensor was successfully designed and an excellent performance was achieved, for example, a wide sensing angle of up to 114°, an accuracy of up to ±0.6° in low light conditions, and a high signal to noise ratio. Therefore, the sensor can be used in many applications such as solar collectors.