White LED based Faraday current sensor using a quartz wavelength encoder

The use of polychromatic light with chromatic modulation has been shown to provide a different approach to Faraday current sensing. In this contribution the use of purely white LEDs along with a quartz rotary encoder and a multiple reflection Faraday sensing element is described for realizing a practical form of a chromatic modulation Faraday current sensor. It is shown that such a sensor embodiment leads to a system sensitivity, for a chromatic system, which is approximately a factor of three times higher than previously reported (0.65 nm A −1 compared with 0.19 nm A −1).