2292 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO.

7, JULY 2011

A Compensation Method to Measure the

Mutual Inductance at Low Frequency
Zhengkun Li, Zhonghua Zhang, Qing He, Yaqiong Fu, Jianting Zhao, Bing Han, Shisong Li, Jiang Lan, and Chen Li

Abstract—Traditionally, the most precise way to get the mutual

inductance value is by a Campbell calculable mutual inductor.
Here, an approach of measuring the mutual inductance at low fre-
quency with compensation method is described. A multi-channel
direct digital frequency synthesis source is developed to provide
stable and precise phase. The mutual inductance is traced to the
value of the frequency and resistance directly. The measurement
uncertainty is 0.43 ppm at present and could be improved further.
Index Terms—Compensation, low frequency, multi-channel di-
rect digital frequency synthesis (DDS), mutual inductance, phase
accuracy.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Campbell mutual inductor.

N ATIONAL Institute of Metrology (NIM) has proposed a

“Joule Balance” method to measure the Planck constant h
[1], [2], and the mutual inductance measurement is a key point
for this approach.
Traditional method to get the mutual inductance value falls
into two methods. One is based on Campbell calculable mutual
inductor [3], [4], and the other is the bridge method, such as
Campbell Bridge, Foster Bridge, etc. [3].
A. Campbell provided an idea to establish a standard of
mutual inductance with calculable coils in 1907 as shown
in Fig. 1.
The primary of the Campbell mutual inductor consists of two
equivalent coils in series with the secondary between them as
shown in Fig. 2, all three being coaxial.
The advantage of this arrangement is that with proper di-
mension and distance between primary and secondary, the
secondary coil can be placed in such a position that the mean
Fig. 2. Outline of the Campbell mutual inductor.
circumference field of the secondary coil due to the primary
coils is zero. Thus, the mutual inductance per turn will be
practically constant over the whole section of a secondary coil may consist of a many-layered coil whose dimensions and
whose axial and radial depths are both small; and the secondary position need not to be known with high accuracy [3].
P. W. Harrison and G. H. Rayner established a primary
standard of mutual inductance based on Campbell’s idea with
Manuscript received June 11, 2010; revised November 4, 2010; accepted uncertainty of 2 × 10−6 (k = 2) in 1966 [4]. NIM built a
November 25, 2010. Date of publication January 6, 2011; date of current ver- similar one in 1986 with uncertainty of 5 × 10−6 (k = 2) [5].
sion June 8, 2011. This work was supported by the China Ministry of Science Campbell inductor has been used to determine the resistance
and Technology 2006BAF06B01 and National Natural Science Foundation of
China 50677065. The Associate Editor coordinating the review process for this via the Campbell Bridge [6], [7]. The principle of Campbell
paper was Dr. Wan-Seop Kim. Bridge is shown in Fig. 3.
Z. Li is with the National Institute of Metrology, Beijing 100013, China
(e-mail: lzk@nim.ac.cn).
There are other bridges, such as A. Campbell’s mutual-
Z. Zhang, Q. He, and J. Zhao are with the National Institute of Metrology, inductance bridge [8], Lynch’s and Eastwood’s inductance
Beijing 100013, China. bridges [9], etc., which are used to measure resistance or ca-
Y. Fu is with the China Jiliang University, Hzangzhou 310018, China.
B. Han is with the Hebei University, Baoding 710049, China. pacitance in terms of mutual inductance for its high accuracy at
S. Li, J. Lan, and C. Li are with the Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, that time. With the Quantum Hall resistance and Cross capacitor
China. established with high accuracy, it is possible that the mutual
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. inductance could be determined by QHR standard or capaci-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2010.2099270 tance with these bridges. However, the resistors and capacitors
0018-9456/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
LI et al.: A COMPENSATION METHOD TO MEASURE THE MUTUAL INDUCTANCE AT LOW FREQUENCY
Fig. 3. Campbell Bridge basic circuit.
in these bridges are not in four terminal configurations. Besides,
the necessary 90◦ phase shift is obtained by not very ideal R and
C elements with limited stability and phase accuracy.
With modern direct digital frequency synthesis (DDS) tech-
nique, the multi-channel source with exact and stable phase can
be developed and more precise measurement of the impedance
than before is possible, especially for the mutual inductance.
A compensation method to measure the mutual inductance
at low frequency by measuring resistance and frequency [10],
which trace to QHR standard and Atomic Clock, respectively,
is described here. The measurement uncertainty of frequency
and QHR standard are easily to be below 10 ppb. Thus in
principle, the measurement accuracy of the mutual inductance
can be improved obviously in comparison with the traditional
methods.
II. P RINCIPLE
A. Theory
Here, a conclusion from the circuit theory is described. In
linear circuit, the amplitude of impedance Z and frequency can
be expressed with Taylor series in the low frequency as
Z = Z|ω=0 +k1 (jω)+k2 (jω)2 +k3 (jω)3 +k4 (jω)4 +· · · .
(1)
The modulus of Z is
 voltage I˙1 RS and induced voltage jωM I˙1 , respectively.
|Z| = (Z|ω=0 −k2 ω 2 +k4 ω 4 +· · ·)2 +(k1 ω−k3 ω 3 +· · ·2 )
= Z|ω=0 +k2 ω 2 +k4 ω 4 +· · · . (2)
In the low frequency range, ω 4 and higher order terms are
negligible. |Z| becomes a linear function of ω 2 as
|Z| = Z|ω=0 + k2 ω 2 . (3)
This conclusion can be used to get the frequency dependence
of impedance including mutual inductance at low-frequency
range. In [9], B. Hague also got the same conclusion that when
the frequency is not too high; the mutual inductance is linear to
the ω 2 as
M = M0 − C12 R1 R2 + aω 2 (4)
where M0 is the mutual inductance at 0 Hz; C12 is the inter-
capacitance between the primary and second windings; R1 and
R2 are the resistance of two windings. With proper design, the
term C12 R1 R2 is usually negligible [9] and (4) will become
M = M0 + aω 2 . (5)
2293
Fig. 4. Basic circuit of the compensation method.
It is the same as (3). Thus, if the values of mutual inductance
at several frequencies are obtained, linear extrapolation can be
used to get the value of mutual inductance at 0 Hz, which will
be used in Joule Balance.
B. Dimension Analysis
The dimension of mutual inductance can be expressed as:
H = Wb/A = V · s/A = Ω · s or H = Ω/Hz. (6)
Obviously, in this view, M can be traced to QHR standard
and Atomic Clock with uncertainty less than 10 ppb.
C. Basic Circuit of the Compensation Method
The basic circuit of the compensation method for mutual
inductance measurement at low frequency is shown in Fig. 4,
where
1) I˙1 is provided by current source with a reference voltage
U̇1 and a sample resistor RS .
2) M is the mutual inductor to be measured.
3) S is switched to change the voltage to be compared.
4) Compensation voltage U̇2 is used to compare with the
For the later case, about 90◦ phase shift of U̇2 is necessary.
5) A lock-in amplifier acts as the null detector.
6) U̇3 is used as the reference signal of lock-in amplifier.
At the same time, it is connected to a counter to get the
precise frequency value.
U̇1 , U̇2 and U̇3 are sine wave signals with the same frequency
and voltage reference. They are generated by a lab-developed
multi-channel DDS source, the clock of which is provided by a
clock generator.
The measurement process includes two steps as following.
Firstly, S is switched to position 1, the voltage U̇R across RS
is compared with U̇2 . Tune the amplitude of U̇2 until the null
detector indicates zero, then we get
U̇2 = I˙1 RS . (7)
Secondly, S is switched to the position 2 to compare the
induced voltage jωM I˙1 with j U̇2 . Here, the 90◦ phase shift of
U̇2 is given by the DDS source. At the same time, the amplitude
of U̇2 should be unchanged. Adjusting the frequency of the
2294 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 7, JULY 2011
clock generator to change ω until the detector indicates zero,
there will be
jωM I˙1 − j U̇2 = 0. (8)
With (7) and (8), we can get
RS
M |ω = . (9)
ω
Thus the mutual inductance value at ω is obtained. Here, RS
is the resistance at the frequency of ω. The ac/dc difference of
RS should be considered when the frequency is too high. In this
paper, when measuring the 10-mH mutual inductor to check the
measurement system, the frequencies used are below 200 Hz.
In this frequency range, the ac/dc difference of RS is about
0.5 ppm according to the parameters of the sample resistors
used here and the calculation method described in [11]. It
is small enough because the experiment of 10-mH mutual
inductor is only for the system principal checking. As for the
measurement of 0.37-H mutual inductor that will be used in
Joule Balance, the frequencies are below 30 Hz, the ac/dc
difference of the resistor can be evaluated at 0.01 ppm level.
Measuring the mutual inductance M at several different
frequencies, we can get the M value at 0 Hz with linear
extrapolation. As to the additional mutual inductance due to
the connecting leads, its effect can be removed by using the
traditional method of short circuit at terminals.
III. M EASUREMENT S YSTEM
From the principle described above, it can be seen that two
key points should be noticed,
1) When the phase of U̇2 changes 90◦ , the amplitude of U̇2
must be the same.
2) The amplitude fluctuation of U̇1 and U̇2 should also be the
same in principle. The measurement result of difference
between U̇1 and U̇2 is provided later in Fig. 7.
As shown in Fig. 4, there are mainly five parts in the measure-
ment system, which are multi-channel DDS source providing
U̇1 , U̇2 and U̇3 , current source, sample resistor, mutual inductor,
and null detector.
A. Multi-Channel DDS Source
Three signals sharing a same clock and voltage reference are
needed in the measurement system in Fig. 4. These signals are
produced by a lab-developed multi-channel DDS source.
The DDS is short for “direct digital frequency synthesis” and
first proposed by J. Tierney, et al. in 1971 [12]. It generates
sine wave by scanning look-up sine wave data table and con-
verting the digital data to analog voltage with digital to analog
converter (DAC). The frequency of the sine wave is determined
by the sampling rate and the size of the sine wave data table.
Obviously, the frequency of the output signal is stable when a
stable time base is used. Another advantage of the DDS is that
the phase of the output signal can be accurately controlled. This
is especially useful when comparing quadrature impedances.
Fig. 5. RMS changes of sine waves from two DDS sources with phases
varying.
It is very important that in a whole measurement process, the
amplitude of U̇2 acting as the compensation voltage should not
change when the phase change 90◦ as the switch is changed
from 1 to 2. However, no precise equipment to measure the
fundamental wave directly is available yet, but a fluke 5790
measuring RMS of a signal was used, which is the best com-
mercially available one. Of course, as it is well known, the
measurement results from 5790 include the harmonic waves
but the measurement results still can give major important
information.
Several commercial multi-channel DDS sources were tested
to check the RMS stability of the sine wave when their phases
change. However, none of them can satisfy the requirement
mentioned above. Fig. 5 shows the RMS of the sine wave
from a commercial multi-channel DDS source when its phase
changes. The amplitude of sine wave from the commercial DDS
equipment fluctuates greatly when the phase varies. In the worst
case, the amplitude fluctuation is about 40 ppm.
Thus, we have to develop a multi-channel source by our-
selves. It is based on DDS and optical fiber isolation technique.
No obvious change is found within the highest resolution of
the best available checking instrument when the phase varies as
shown in Fig. 5.
Two main DDS channels, U̇1 and U̇2 , in 1 : 1 ratio are
necessary to compare quadrature impedances. To tune the in
phase and quadrature components of U̇1 finely, two additional
channels attached to one of two main channels are also designed
and voltage dividers are used to get small signals.
Same type digital to analog converter (DAC) chips were used
in all the channels and a same reference voltage are supplied to
all DACs. Thus, most amplitude drifts are cancelled out when
the two main signals are used for 1 : 1 ratio.
Current source: An ultra-low noise amplifier is used in the
current source. The working currents are about 50 mA
and 100 mA in this test, which are determined by U̇1
and sample resistor RS . To reduce the current drift due to
overheating of sample resistor, a lot of resistor elements are
connected in parallel and series to make the power of every
resistor pretty small.
Sample resistors: The reference resistor RS is connected as
shown in Fig. 4. The lower current terminal of RS is
connected to the common point of batteries. This mode can
LI et al.: A COMPENSATION METHOD TO MEASURE THE MUTUAL INDUCTANCE AT LOW FREQUENCY 2295

Fig. 7. Relative instability of the difference between two channels.

Fig. 6. Noise of signal from one coil and two reversely connected coils.
TABLE I
M EASUREMENT R ESULTS AND R EPEATABILITY OF A 10-mH
ensure the 4-wire connection of RS and the current will M UTUAL I NDUCTOR AT 159 Hz
flow into the power ground other than the signal ground.
Mutual Inductor: A Sullivan mutual inductor (type R1968,
No. 661787) with nominal value 10 mH is used to check
the low frequency mutual inductance measurement system.
Besides, a lab-fabricated 0.37 H mutual inductor which
will be used in Joule Balance is measured with the equip-
ment described here. In contrast with Campbell coils, the
primary of the lab-fabricated mutual inductor is just one
coil, and the secondary consists of two coils connected
reversely, thus the random signal from outer magnetic
field coupling into coils is cancelled each other as shown
in Fig. 6. The big noise signal is from one coil of the
secondary in the mutual inductor. Another experiment line
with very low noise signal close to 0 in Fig. 6 is from the
secondary including two reversely connected coils. It can
be seen that, noise is greatly reduced in the later case. To
avoid the occurrence of eddy currents, no metal frame is
used for the coils.
Null detector: A SR830 Lock-in amplifier acts as the null
detector. It uses a technique known as phase-sensitive
detection to single out the component of the signal at a
specific reference frequency and phase. Noise signals at
frequencies other than the reference frequency are rejected
and do not affect the measurement.

IV. M EASUREMENTS R ESULTS Fig. 8. Measurement results of a 10-mH mutual inductor.

A. Measurement Results of the Multi-Channel Source TABLE II
A 10-mH M UTUAL I NDUCTOR I S M EASURED AT F OUR F REQUENCIES
The outputs of the two channels (Ch1, Ch2) with the same
phase from the lab-developed DDS source are compared di-
rectly to test the relative instability of the difference between
them as shown in Fig. 7. A lock-in amplifier SR830 was used
as the null detector. The standard deviation of the relative
instability within 4 min is less than 0.01 ppm.

B. Measurement Results of a 10-mH Standard

Mutual Inductor
A standard mutual inductor (type R1968, no. 661787) from
H.W. Sullivan Ltd with nominal value of 10 mH is measured
by the equipment described here at 159 Hz to check the
repeatability. The results are shown in Table I and Fig. 8.
Fig. 8 shows that the mutual inductance is drifting with time,
so results with linear drift removed are provided, too.
The mutual inductor mentioned above was measured at four
frequencies to get the mutual inductance at 0 Hz as shown in
Table II and Fig. 9.
The measurement results in Table II is performed in a
different day from those in Table I. The difference of the
mutual inductance measured at 159 Hz is mainly from the
2296 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 60, NO. 7, JULY 2011
Fig. 9. Measurement results of a 10-mH mutual inductor.
TABLE III
M UTUAL I NDUCTOR AT S IX F REQUENCIES
Fig. 10. Linear extrapolation to get the M at 0 Hz.
temperature difference and the poor long term stability of the
mutual inductor.
With linear extrapolation, the mutual inductance at 0 Hz can
be got as 9.99694 mH (20 ◦ C) as shown in Fig. 9.
The value of the mutual inductor (no.661787) measured by
the China primary standard for magnetic flux is 9.9976(7) mH
(20 ◦ C). It is in accordance with the results from the new
measurement system described here.
C. Measurement Results of a 0.37H Mutual Inductor
A 0.37-H mutual inductor was fabricated to simulate the
actual condition in the Joule Balance. Measurements were
performed at six frequencies as shown in Table III and Fig. 10.
V. U NCERTAINTY B UDGET
The uncertainty budget of the measurement results for
0.37-H mutual inductor is shown in Table IV. Resistance value
is traced to QHR Standard by a CCC bridge. The relative
instability of the two channel DDS sources also affects the
TABLE IV
U NCERTAINTY B UDGET
measurement. The uncertainty can be evaluated at 0.01 ppm
according to the measurement results in Fig. 7.
VI. C ONCLUSION
A compensation method is described to measure the mutual
inductance at low frequency. Linear extrapolation is used to get
the mutual inductance value at 0 Hz. With our lab-developed
multi-channel DDS source, the amplitude of signal is stable
when its phase changes. With ac method, thermal effects are
avoided and the lock-in amplifier can be used as a null de-
tector to single out the component of the signal at a specific
reference frequency and phase, thus the signal to noise ratio
is satisfactory. Besides, in the low frequency range used here,
ac/dc difference of resistors, the eddy current effect and skin
effect of windings can also be negligible. Operation amplifiers
work well at low frequency too.
With the approach described here, the mutual inductance is
traced to the value of frequency and resistance directly. The pre-
cise measurement of coil dimensions and detailed calculation is
unnecessary. The measurement uncertainty is about 0.43 ppm at
present and could be improved further in the future when lower
frequencies are used and the stability of the mutual inductance
is better.
R EFERENCES
[1] Z. Zhang, Q. He, and Z. Li, “An approach for improving the watt balance,”
in Proc. CPEM Dig., Torino, Italy, Jul. 9–14, 2006, pp. 126–127.
[2] Z. Zhang, Q. He, Z. Li, Y. Lu, J. Zhao, B. Han, C. Li, S. Li, and Y. Fu,
“The progress of joule balance in NIM,” in Proc. CPEM Dig., Daejeon,
Korea, Jun. 2010, pp. 516–517.
[3] A. Campbell, “On a standard of mutual inductance,” Proc. Roy. Soc.,
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[6] A. Campbell, “On the determination of resistance in terms of mutual
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[7] G. H. Rayner, “An absolute determination of resistance by Campbell’s
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[9] B. Hague, Alternating Current Bridge Method. London, U.K.: Pitman,
1971, pp. 154–183.
[10] Z. Li, Z. Zhang, Q. He, Y. Fu, J. Zhao, B. Han, S. Li, Y. Lu, and
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[11] Z. Li, Q. He, L. Huang, and J. Liu, “A new type AC resistor with calculable
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Mar. 1971.
Zhengkun Li was born in Henan province, China in
1977. He received the B.S. degree in instrument sci-
ence and technology from China Jiliang University
(CJLU), Hangzhou, China, in 1999, the M.S. degree
in instrument science and technology from National
Institute of Metrology (NIM), Beijing, China, in
2002, and the Ph.D. degree in electricity and elec-
tronic from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China,
in 2006.
In 2002, he was with the NIM where he worked
in Quantum Division. Since 2005, he is with the
Electricity and Quantum division of NIM. He is involved in the research work of
electrical quantum standards, particularly the quantum Hall resistance standard
and quantum mass (Joule Balance) standard.
Jianting Zhao was born in Weifang, Shandong provience, China in 1981.
He received the B.Sc. degree form the Electricity Engineering School, China
University of Geoscience, Beijing, China, in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree
from the Electricity Engineering School, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China,
respectively, in 2009.
In 2009, he was with the National Institute of Metrology (NIM), Beijing,
China, where he worked in the Electricity and Quantum Division for the
development of electrical quantum standards, especially the AC quantum Hall
resistance standard, and quantum mass (Joule Balance) standard.
Bing Han was born in July 1978. He received the
Ph.D. degree from Tianjin University, Tianjin, China,
in 2009.
He is currently a Postdoctoral fellow working
in National Institute of Metrology (NIM), Beijing,
China. His research interests include electric and
magnetic standard problems.

Zhonghua Zhang was born in Suzhou, Jiangshu

provience, China, in July 1940. He received the B.S.
degree and the M.S. degree in electricity engineering
from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1965
and 1967, respectively.
In 1967, he joined in National Institute of Metrol-
ogy (NIM), Beijing, China, where he worked in the
Electromagnetic Davison for Cross Capacitor Stan-
dard. In 1995, he became a member of the Chinese
Academy of Engineering. In 2005, he and his team Shisong Li received the B.S. degree from North China Electric Power Univer-
joined in Electricity and Quantum division. He is sity, Beijing, China, in 2009. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
involved in the research of electrical quantum standards, especially the quantum at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His dissertation will be a part of the
Hall resistance standard, ac resistance standard and quantum mass (Joule Joule Balance project in NIM, China.
Balance) standard. He is with the Department of Electric Engineering, Tsinghua University. His
current research interests are about modern precise electromagnetic measure-
ment and instrument technology.
Qing He was born in Beijing, on August 10, 1965.
He received the Bachelor degree from Tsinghua Uni-
versity, Beijing, China, in 1988, the Master degree
from Beijing University of Chemical Technology,
Beijing, China, in 1999, and the Doctor degree
from Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China,
in 2009.
He joined the National Institute of Metrology Jiang Lan was born in 1985. He received the B.S.
(NIM), Beijing, China, in 1988. From then to 2003, degree in hydropower and information engineering
he worked on establishing the Chinese QHR stan- from Huazhong University of Science and Tech-
dard based on a cryogenic current comparator. At nology, Wuhan, China. Since 2008, he is currently
the same time, he paid efforts on helping industry to solve some precise working toward the Doctoral degree in precision
measurement problems, such as low magnetic flux and permeability of soft measurement in Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
magnetic material. He developed a method to measure the mutual inductance He is currently engaged in his doctoral research
by using a digital integrator, which became the technical basis of the Chinese work in the National Institute of Metrology (NIM),
Joule Balance. His current research interests are the Joule Balance, ACQHR Beijing, China. Since 2009, he has been involved in
and quantum device fabrication. several key research projects such as “The key tech-
nologies of the fine structure constant measurement
and the research on the capacitance standard”.
Yaqiong Fu was born in Zhangjiakou, Hebei
province, China, on 15 May, 1983. He received the
M.E. degree from China Jiliang University (CJLU),
Hangzhou, China, in 2009.
In March 2009, he became a member of College of
Mechatronics Engineering, CJLU. In August 2009,
he was sent to the quantum division in National
Institute of Metrology (NIM), Beijing, China, to join Chen Li was born in July 1983. He received the B.S. degree from Beijing
in the research of quantum mass (Joule Balance) Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2004. He is currently working toward
standard. He is currently involved in the research of the Ph.D. degree at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
mutual inductance measurement and DDS source. His research interests include electricity and magnetic standard problems.