Analysis and compensation of synchronous measurement error for multi-channel laser interferometer

Dual-frequency laser interferometer has been widely used in precision motion system as a displacement sensor, to achieve nanoscale positioning or synchronization accuracy. In a multi-channel laser interferometer synchronous measurement system, signal delays are different in the different channels, which will cause asynchronous measurement, and then lead to measurement error, synchronous measurement error (SME). Based on signal delay analysis of the measurement system, this paper presents a multi-channel SME framework for synchronous measurement, and establishes the model between SME and motion velocity. Further, a real-time compensation method for SME is proposed. This method has been verified in a self-developed laser interferometer signal processing board (SPB). The experiment result showed that, using this compensation method, at a motion velocity 0.89 m s−1, the max SME between two measuring channels in the SPB is 1.1 nm. This method is more easily implemented and applied to engineering than the method of directly testing smaller signal delay.