OPTICAL WAVEGUIDE SENSOR EQUIPMENT

摘要

PURPOSE:To make possible highly-precise detection of a positional slippage and the direction of the slippage of a light beam by computing the amount of the positional slippage and the direction of the slippage of a received light beam from a prescribed detection reference point (center of detection) provided on the respective end faces of a plurality of optical waveguides. CONSTITUTION:A received light beam is imaged and cast by a focus lens 20 on a light-sensing surface 10s of an optical waveguide sensor 10 on which each end face of optical waveguides 21 and 22 is formed. Lights outputted from the other ends of the waveguides are converted into electric signals having the levels of a DC component being proportional to received-light powers P1 and P2 of the incident light by photodetectors 24a and 24b, and further the signals are subjected to A/D conversions 25a and 25b and outputted to a signal processing part 26. The processing part 26 determines a directional error angle from a difference (P1-P2)/P0 (P0 denotes a total received-light power) between standardized received-light powers detected on the basis of the inputted powers P1 and P2, and detects the amount x0 of positional slippage and the direction of the slippage of the light beam. Since a mechanical or electric scanning mechanism is dispensed with according to this constitution, the mechanism of the equipment is simplified and can be made small in size and light in weight.