The Performance Improvement of a Linear CCD Sensor Using an Automatic Threshold Control Algorithm for Displacement Measurement

Among the sensors mainly used for displacement measurement, there are a linear CCD(Charge Coupled Device) and a PSD(Position Sensitive Detector) as a non-contact type. Their structures are different very much, which means that the signal processing of both sensors should be applied in the different ways. Most of the displacement measurement systems to get the 3-D shape profile of an object using a linear CCD are a computer-based system. It means that all of algorithms and mathematical operations are performed through a computer program to measure the displacement. However, in this paper, the developed system has microprocessor and other digital components that make the system measure the displacement of an object without a computer. The thing different from the previous system is that AVR microprocessor and FPGA(Field Programmable Gate Array) technology, and a comparator is used to play the role of an A/D(Analog to Digital) converter. Furthermore, an ATC(Automatic Threshold Control) algorithm is applied to find the highest pixel data that has the real displacement information. According to the size of the light circle incident on the surface of the CCD, the threshold value to remove the noise and useless data is changed by the operation of AVR microprocessor. The total system consists of FPGA, AVR microprocessor, and the comparator. The developed system has the improvement and shows the better performance than the system not using the ATC algorithm for displacement measurement.