A simple method to measure phase difference between sinusoidal signals

In this paper, a novel and simple method to measure the phase difference between two sinusoidal signals is presented. Basically, the method consists of subtracting two sinusoidal signals with same frequencies and measuring the resulting signal amplitude: this amplitude being a minimum whenever there is a coincidence between both signal phases. In order to test this method, an adjustable phase reference signal has been generated using a direct digital synthesizer device. Employing this reference signal, it can be demonstrated that the phase difference between two signals can be evaluated with errors smaller than 0.3° for signals with frequencies up to 1.25 MHz.