Windowed high-order ambiguity function method for fringe analysis

This paper introduces a windowed high-order ambiguity function (WHAF) method for the demodulation of fringe patterns recorded in holographic interferometry. It first obtains the analytic signal of the fringe pattern and models it as a piecewise polynomial phase signal. A parametric estimation procedure based on HAF is then employed to calculate the polynomial coefficients of the phase over each window of the segmented analytic signal. A salient feature of the proposed method is that it provides an accurate and direct estimation of the unwrapped phase distribution from a single fringe pattern, even when the pattern's phase is rapidly varying. WHAF's application to both digital and classical holographic interferometry is demonstrated by simulation and experimental results.