A SIMPLE LOW COST LOCK-IN AMPLIFIER FOR MEASUREMENT OF SMALL SIGNALS CONTAMINATED BY NOISE.

Karthikeyan Subbu Department of Physics, Mithibai College

Introduction

Accurate measurement of weak signal in noisy environments is a big challenge even in research laboratories. The techniques which are used to solve this problem involves high end and expensive and dedicated electronic gadgets. This solution is not viable to college level laboratories.

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Whats the solution for this problem?

A simple and effective solution is Lock in amplifier (LIA)
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What is Lock-in Amplifier ?

A lock-in amplifier is basically an amplifier that amplifies a small frequency band around a certain reference frequency A lock-in can be used to

Measure sinusoidal voltage amplitudes and phase Measure noise around a certain frequency Measure Power spectral density etc.

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Block Diagram

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Our home-made LIA

LIA made in-house is wired using inexpensive electronic components readily available components normally used in undergraduate laboratory viz. OPAMP 741, cmos Bilateral switch 4016, photdiode bpw34, LEDs, etc. We are presenting here a comparative study of measurement with and without lock in amplifier. The phenomenon chosen is Verification of inverse square law (Optical) which is a MANSHODHAN IV 14/12/2013 undergraduate LAB experiment.

Setup for verification of Inverse square law (intensity )

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1/d^2 ( x 10^(-3))cm ^(-2)

4000 1000 250 110 65.2 40 27.8 20.4 15.6 12.3 10 8.26 6.94 5.92 5.1 4.49 3.91 3.46 3.09 2.77 2.5 1.1 0.7 0.5 0.2 0.1

Vo mV

Vo mV

with LIA
809 464 187 98.5 59.4 39.4 27.4 20.1 15.2 11.8 9.4 7.5 6.1 5 4.1 3.4 2.9 2.4 2 1.6 1.3 1.1 0.7 0.5 0.2 0.1

without LIA
840 500 300 200 120 70 50 38 28 24 22 21.5 20 20 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19 19

Inverse Square Law Verification

200

with LIA without LIA

150

Vo (mV)

100

50

20

40

60
-3 -2

80

100

120

1/d2 ( x 10 )cm

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Conclusion

We have designed a low cost lock in amplifier which can be used as a research tool for signal recovery and measurement in a noisy environment. It can also be used as a teaching aid for undergraduate and postgraduate laboratories. The LIA has a response fairly comparable to commercially available LIAs. The cost of the designed LIA is 500 times lesser than commercially available LIAs.
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