Velocity Profile Measurement Using Digital Signal Processor-Based Optical Tomography System

The utilization of personal computer together with data acquisition system (DAS) as the processing tool in optical tomography systems has been a norm ever since the beginning of process tomography. However, the advancements in silicon fabrication technology nowadays allow the fabrication of powerful digital signal processors (DSPS) at a reasonable cost. This allows the technology to be applied in optical tomography system since data acquisition and processing can be performed within the DSP. Thus, the dependency of personal computer and the DAS to sample and process the external signals can be reduced or otherwise eliminated. The DSP system was customized to control the data acquisition process of 16 times 16 optical sensors array, arranged in parallel beam projection. The data collected was used to measure the velocity profile using sensor to sensor cross-correlation and pixel to pixel cross correlation.