Time-frequency analysis of multiple fringe and nonsinusoidal signals obtained from a fiber-optic vibration sensor using an extrinsic Fabry-Pe´rot interferometer

In the case of multiple fringes and complex frequency measurements, the frequency of the output signal changes rapidly when the vibration changes and frequency breakdown takes place at the turning point. For a particular vibration signature containing many frequency components at different time intervals, it is often difficult to trace the direction of the vibration as well as individual frequency peaks. In such cases, advanced signal-processing scheme is necessary to decode the vibration signature. This paper investigates the data interrogation technique for multifrequency and complex signals of surface vibration obtained from an extrinsic Fabry-Pe´rot interferometric sensor. In this paper, wavelet transform (WT)-based signal processing methodology has been employed to count of optical fringes with special reference to signals having subfringes. A WT-based tool has also been developed for unambiguous identification of frequency components from a nonsinusoidal vibration. The results of such WT-based analyses are presented, and merits as well as demerits of the proposed methods are discussed.