Reconsidering natural binary encoding for absolute position measurement application

It is well known that absolute encoders using natural binary codes are prone to reading errors because more bits can change between adjacent scale sectors. Some solutions, such as V-scan, were proposed to solve this problem, but they required too many additional reading heads and decoding circuits to be competitive with the reduced complexity obtained when using the Gray code. The author describes a novel natural binary absolute encoder using an original scanning technique that solves more efficiently the problem of the inherent code reading errors. It is shown that for the same nominal resolution, the complexity of the encoder is similar to, if not better than, that of the Gray-type encoder