Method for acceleration measurement using a laser Doppler interferometer

A novel method for estimating acceleration directly from the digitized waveform of interference signals is proposed based on a laser Doppler interferometer. In this method, a second-order polynomial function is developed, of which the coefficients are calculated by fitting with the time and corresponding order of zero crossings. Acceleration is calculated as the product of the second-order coefficient and the wavelength of a laser. The performance of this method is evaluated by comparing with the zero crossing method (ZCM) and zero crossing fitting method (ZFM) in simulation. The results show that the accuracy of acceleration calculated by using this method is higher than those by using the ZCM and ZFM, particularly when the signal-to-noise ratio is lower than 40 dB. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd.