A position sensing method for 2D scanning mirrors

This paper presents a cost-effective position sensing method for 2D scanning mirrors. The method uses only one 1D PSD (position sensitive detector) located at the backside of the 2D scanning mirror plate to retrieve the 2D rotation angle about the two axes separately in real time. Any 2D scanning mirror with resonant vibration about one axis and quasi-static vibration such as sinusoidal, saw tooth, triangular oscillation about the other axis can use this method. The two vibration axes are orthogonal to each other to form the scanning patterns, which are most desired in scanning 3D LiDAR systems. 3D scanning LiDAR is the targeted application for this research. The method uses timing measurement to measure the resonant vibration angle and Lagrange interpolation polynomial approximation to retrieve the quasi-static vibration angle. A prototype has been built to measure the 2D rotation angle of a 2D micromirror. The measured angle using the proposed method was verified using a 2D PSD. The largest errors for the vertical/horizontal angles were 9.6% and 5.36% respectively. The position sensing mechanism is also integrated to a scanning 2D micromirror based LiDAR system to demonstrate it as real time capability.