Real-time measurement system of laser power in VC++

ZHUO Hong-yan, Song Ying-song, WANG Lei

Institute of Applied Electronics, CAEP, P.O. Box 919-1011, Mianyang 621900, China

ABSTRACT
ADLINK PCI-9114 multifunction data acquisition card, signal amplifier and multiplexer board and power sensor are
used to establish the real-time measurement system of relative laser power. During producing laser, measuring and
showing thermoelectric and photoelectric signal, calculating parameter and drawing the curve of relative power.

Key words: laser power, the real-time measurement, laser energy

Parameters of laser output power and energy are concerned with researchers. These parameters are important for
evaluating laser system. In this paper, a real time laser power measure system is established. While laser system is
operating, real time laser power measure system measured the power and energy of laser and plotted the waveform of
relative laser power. The parameters such as pulse width, rise time, fall time, power integration, average power, peak
power and average energy are computed.
1. SYSTEM DESIGN
The measure system consists of hardware and software. The operation procedure is showed in figure 1. Incident laser
power is transferred to voltage signals by power meter. Then the voltage signals are outputted to signal modulating box.
In the box, voltage signals is modulated and amplified. After being transformed by A/D, the voltage signals changed into
digital signals. Hence computer can process these signals to get important information being concerned.

Power meter Signal modulating box Computer / Signal captrue card

Fig. 1 Schematic configure of system

System hardware utilized A/D data capture card of Adlink Inc. Type of this card is PCI-9114A with high precision and
high gain. Resolution of this card is 16bit. Input voltage range is -10V~+10V. During applications, data of opto-electric
channel and thermoelectric channel are sampled respectively. Application software is programmed under environment of
VC++ 6.0. The most important feature of VC++ 6.0 is that it supports technology of object faced. It utilizes the class to
encapsule the windows API function which is relative with GUI. It is well known that MFC is a real standard class
library. There is lots of industrial control cards that supports software developments with VC. Hence, functions of
hardware initializing and A/D transform are developed by calling the functions of 32bit DLL supported by Adlink under
GUI of VC[1].
2. FUNCTION CONFIGURE OF SOFTWARE
System software is divided into three parts based on different function, that is, GUI control, signal acquisition and data
processing. Figure 2 shows the configure.
Signals which are acquired in opto-electric channel and thermoelectric channel have been filtered and amplified. Then
signals are sent to computer. Then parameters of time, power and energy have been compared and computed. Time
parameter includes startup, rise time, fall time and half width. Power parameter includes average power and peak power.

International Symposium on Photoelectronic Detection and Imaging 2009: Laser Sensing and Imaging,
edited by Farzin Amzajerdian, Chun-qing Gao, Tian-yu Xie, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 7382, 73823G
© 2009 SPIE · CCC code: 0277-786X/09/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.835332

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 Energy parameter includes energy and comparison of power integration. The waveform curves are plotted in real time
with power and energy. And sampled origin data are saved in text format. The save procedure can be done automatically
by only selecting a file. File is also named automatically. After each experiment user can reload origin data to play back
waveform. While designing software, some anti-jamming technique is applied. System can calibrate the voltage of
reference spot. Dynamic zero spot is applied to avoid drift of voltage.

Real time power measure oftwar

Data Acquisition Data processing

GUI Control

Parameter calculation

Curve display and

Data modulation
Channel setup

comparison

File save
A/D, D/A

of laser
Fig. 2 Schematic configure of system function

3. IMPLEMENTATION OF SOFTWARE
3.1 SYSTEM SETUP
Main function of system setup is initializing system. The initializing consists of hardware initializing and parameters
setup. Firstly, hardware board is initialized by set up address and parameters. Under environment of VC++ 6.0, it is to
initialize PCI-9114 and setup software reset. Implementation code is listed below. Parameter setup is to set up sample
frequency, sample time and threshold, and so on.
U16 W_9114_Initial (U16 *existCardsˈPCI_INFO *info); //Initialization;
Void U16 W_9114_Software_Reset (U16 CardNo); //software reset;

3.2 REAL TIME DATA ACQUISITION

Program code of data acquisition from port by using PCI-9114 A/D chip is listed below[2].
U16 W_9114_AD_Read_Data(U16 cardNo,U16 *ADData);
Under environments of VC++, multimedia timer is applied to implement the function of time triggering. Time precision
can be about several milliseconds. Multimedia timer is one of sources supported by windows operation system.
Procedure to achieve the timer is studied. Firstly, parameters of multimedia timer shall be set up. System can call
function timeGetDevCaps( ) to determine minimum precision and maximum precision of timer. Secondly, system run
timer to open sorts of applications, such as data acquisition, etc.. Finally, system delete timer to release system resources.
In general application, system used WM_TIMER and “lose second” appeared. And under Windows XP system, precision
of WM_TIMER is only about 55ms. This precision can not be suitable for our application. Problem of thresholds of
acquisition should be mentioned. Data acquisition sampled data of opto-electric channel and thermoelectric channel.
That is, power and energy signals are acquired. In general, we can get energy by integrating power of time. And in the

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 real sampling of power and energy, sample time of power and energy is different. Under test of system, at the end of laser
pulse, voltage of power channel is zero and voltage of energy channel is also varied. With the thermo-effect of sensor of
energy channel, value of energy is still accumulated. Hence, while power sampling is done, the software is also designed
to sample energy channel for more time until the energy value is no longer changed. And for same reason, another
measure of laser power and energy is not begun until the power meter is cooled down. Otherwise, there will be a
background value accumulated into the results. So, system should set up a threshold to correct this drift. How to set up
the threshold lies at the real state of power meter in applications. And in general, value of threshold in less the 1J.

3.3 REAL TIME DISPLAY AND PLAYBACK OF WAVEFORM

During measurements, system should display and playback the waveform of relative power of laser in real time. Because
of different sample time, length of origin data of each sample is varied. For an instance, when sample frequency is 20Hz,
there will be 400 samples. So, system should define a storage matrix which length is bigger than 400. Length of matrix
will be changed with sample time. If static matrix were used to store and call the data to plot curves, system must define
a very big matrix before running program. And during program running, the static matrix could not be changed. In real
system design, dynamic matrix is used and pointer callback is applied. This method can easily plot curves and playback
results. Method of dynamic matrix can select suitable construct function based on sample time. And it does not need
calculating byte number of object [3]. That is, system creates object dynamically and assigns memory space dynamically.
Method of dynamic matrix can effectively use the memory.
4. APPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
Figure 3 is relative power curves in a special application. In the figure, x-coordinate sample time with unit s and
y-coordinate is relative power without dimension.

Fig. 3 relative power

Through test and experiments, the power measure system is applied in real engineering system. All its features are
satisfied with system design requirements. While running with other multithread programs, precision of time is up to
2-3ms. Under test and calibration, waveform measured is consistent with real data.
REFERENCES
1. QIAO Lin, YANG Zhi-gang, HE Min. Visual Cˇˇ6.0 program design for new learner [M]. Beijing˖China Railway
Publisher, August 2000.
2. User Handbook of PCI-9114, ADLINK Inc.
3. LIU Wei-hong, CHEN Pei. Foundation for Visual C++ program[M]. Beijing: Science Publisher, 2003.

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