Chromatic compression of sensor signals in the wavelength, time and parameter domains

The use of chromatic methodology has been previously described for sensing various parameters with optical fibres via changes in the optical spectrum of the transmitted light due to modulation by a measurand. In this contribution we explain how the chromatic method is a truncated form of Gabor transforms. As such the approach may be advantageously applied more generally than in the optical wavelength domain for the extraction of information about complex systems when economies of cost and effort are paramount. An example of the chromatic approach in the optical domain is given before demonstrating its applicability to the time rather than wavelength domain. It is then shown how the outputs from a group of different sensors may be represented by points in chromatic space which are compressible in the limit to a single representative point with total traceability back to individual sensor elements. An alternative chromatic approach for combining the outputs of a multitude of sensors in a weighted manner is described whereby up to 40 sensor outputs have been compressed