Hall-effect based sensor application on angular

measurement
Makrand Farkade, Tanmoy Roy, Siddharth Tallur
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai, 400076, India

Abstract—This paper presents the application of linear hall sensor that is placed nearby will produce a sine wave output as
effect sensor and permanent magnets on angular measurement. the magnet turns.
It is a contactless angular measurement system with rotary
magnetic system with linear hall effect sensor measuring the
strength of the magnetic field and output voltage proportional to
that measurement. The advantage of the system is its non-contact
functioning which provides reliable operation for continuous use
and provides resistance to vibration, shock, humidity and dust.

Index Terms— Contactless angle measurement, Hall effect,

magnetic sensor, permanent magnet,

I. INTRODUCTION

This paper presents the technique of measuring the angle of

rotary system using linear hall effect sensor and permanent bar
magnets. Angular measurements are crucial in
electromechanical and mechanical systems used in automation Figure 1. Proposed system
industries. Analog potentiometers are low cost and provide
good contactless angular measurement. Heavy wear, limited
lifetime, poor reliability and susceptible to harsher
environment may compromise their accuracy. The optical The complete 360° rotation can be recorded when two
angle sensor consists of the source of the light and the linear Hall sensors are used with a 90° phase offset to produce
photodetector. This method ensures a long lifetime of the sine and cosine waveforms, as shown in Figure 2.
equipment. However, its disadvantage is it requires a
transparent line of site also its accuracy is compromised in
vibration and shock environments. It also it has high
sensitivity to dirt and dust. The advantages of magnetic
sensors are that they provide non-contact measurements,
provide resistance to shock and vibrations and are insensitive
to dirt and dust.
This system utilizes hall effect for angular measurement.
The principle of hall-effect is when a conductor or
semiconductor with current flowing in one direction when
introduced perpendicular to a magnetic field a voltage could
be measured at right angles to the current path. This same
principle allows for accurate angle measurement and to
develop a complete hall sensor and magnet-based system.
Figure 2. Phase shifted sinusoidal output of the
Based on the degree range and resolution needed, one or more
sensors
linear hall sensors can be used for angular measurement.

The Linear Hall Effect Sensor measures the magnetic flux

density vector component and output a linearly proportional

signal. As the magnet in Figure 1 rotates, it produces a

sinusoidal variation in magnetic flux density at every point in II. PROPOSED SYSTEM/ METHODOLOGY
space around it, in 2 or 3 of the axes. Therefore, a linear Hall
The construction of magnetic rotary system needed two
semi-ring-shaped permanent magnets made of a semi-ring
 outside N pole and inside S pole and on other hand, outside
S pole and inside N pole. For this system, the construction
of the magnetic rotating system is accomplished using
smaller bar magnets attached to a PPE (polyphenylene
ether) cylindrical shaft so that they take form of
diametrically oriented ring magnet as shown in figure3. The
dimensions of the permanent bar magnets: height 10 mm,
width 5 mm and thickness 5 mm.
normalized to ±1 for use with the arctan2 function in order to
determine the angle using Equation 1.
……….(1)
Then, these normalized values are mapped with the output
voltage levels. The sensor and magnets are placed so that the
sensor voltage output is not clipped or railed at either of the
poles. The arctan2 function outputs 0° to 360° output for
sensor values.

Figure 3. Magnetic Rotary System using

multiple permanent bar magnets

The magnetic system is mounted to the shaft of the stepper Figure 4. Schematic view of the angle
motor. The stepper motor used here is bipolar NEMA 17 measurement system with the rotary system
stepper motor. The stepper motor is controlled using a mounted on a stepper motor along with its
TB6650 based driver as shown in figure 4. The sensors are motor driver and microcontroller board
orthogonally placed to measure the X-axis and Y-axis
directions of the rotating magnetic field. The projections of the
external magnetic field give the sine and cosine of the rotation
angle as shown in Figure 1. The angular position information
(i.e., α) is extracted from those two signals using Arduino Uno III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
microcontroller.
After performing the calibration of the angular
measurement, by rotating the stepper motor 360°, two sine
The stepper motor here acts as a reference system. The curves, phase shifted by 90° are obtained. These signals are
stepper motor rotates proportional to the number of pulses and processed to extsract the value of angle. The one step of
the speed of rotation is relative to the frequency of those stepper motor corresponds to 0.8°. The angle is extracted from
pulses. The step of stepper motor used in this system the normalized values of each sensor from Equation (1).
corresponds to 0.8°. The rotating magnetic system is mounted
through an acrylic sheet on the motor which provides the base
for electronics and also calibration as shown in figure 4.

The calibration of the system can be achieved by recording

the minimum and maximum voltages from each sensor while
rotating the magnetic system 360°. Then each sensor data is
 Figure 5. Hall voltages for the sensors with
10steps/sec motor speed from 0° to 360°.
It is observed that the system is able to detect angle with
resolution of 10 steps is 8.0° with a distance of each sensor at
2 mm from the rotary system as shown in figure 5
Figure 6. Hall voltages for the sensors with
5steps/sec motor speed from 0° to 360 with
dead angles
The system could not detect all 0° to 360° angles for less than
its observed resolution as shown in figure 6 i.e. for stepper
motor speed of 5 steps/sec (< 8.0°).
Figure 7. Hall voltages for the sensors with
5steps/sec motor speed from 0° to 360 with
dead angles and with increase contact angle of
the sensors from the rotary system.
As we observe from figure 5 and figure 6 that the system was
not able to generate pure sine shaped wave for the magnetic
field due to presence of multiple pole pairs which might be the
cause for its poor resolution. Also, we tried to increase the
contact distance of the sensors from the rotary system but it
still gave poor results as shown in figure 7.
IV. CONCLUSION
Thus, angular measurement system based on a magnetic
rotating system and linear Hall-effect sensors can be built
with complete rotation around the motor axis. Inspite of
poor angle resolution this project shows the possibilities for
building a rugged sensors system for angle measurement
insensitive to high vibration, temperature, moisture, or dust.
REFERENCES
[1] Yun Yao Lee, Ruh-Hua Wu and S.T. Xu, “Applications of Linear Hall-
Effect Sensors on Angular Measurement.”, 2011 IEEE International
Conference on Control Applications (CCA), Denver, CO, USA.
September 28-30, 2011
[2] Karol Bieilczyk. “Angle Measurement Using a Miniature Hall Effect
Position Sensor.”, 2009 IEEE, Mechatronics Conference.
[3] Sensing and Control, “Hall effect sensing and application”, Honeywell
Inc., 11 West Spring Street, Freeport, Illinois 61032
[4] Texas Instruments, “Linear Hall Effect Sensor Angle Measurement
Theory, Implementation, and Calibration.”