Power spectra for laser-extinction measurements

Recent laser technology provides accurate measures of the dynamics of fluids and embedded particles. For instance, the laser-extinction measurements (LEM) uses a laser beam passing across the fluid and measures the residual laser light intensity at the fluid output. The particle concentration is estimated from this measurement. However, the particle flow is submitted to random time-varying fluctuations. This study thus proposes to model the received intensity by an appropriate random process. This paper first models the particle flow by a queueing process. Second, the measured intensity power spectrum is derived according to this random model. Finally, the simple case of a constant particle velocity is developped. The proposed model allows to generalize results previously obtained in the litterature with simplified models. Moreover, the particle celerity estimate is provided.