An application of simulated annealing in compensation of nonlinearity of scanners

Abstract

Galvo scanners are popular devices for fast transversal scanning. A triangular signal is usually employed to drive galvo scanners at scanning rates close to the inverse of their response time where scanning deflection becomes a nonlinear function of applied voltage. To address this, the triangular signal is synthesized from several short ramps with different slopes. An optimization algorithm similar to a simulated annealing algorithm is used for finding the optimal signal shape to drive the galvo scanners. As a result, a significant reduction in the nonlinearity of the galvo scanning is obtained.