Interference signal frequency tracking for extracting phase in frequency scanning interferometry using an extended Kalman filter

Optical frequency scanning nonlinearity seriously affects interference signal phase extraction accuracy in frequency-scanning interferometry systems using external cavity diode lasers. In this paper, an interference signal frequency tracking method using an extended Kalman filter is proposed. The interferometric phase is obtained by integrating the estimated instantaneous frequency over time. The method is independent of the laser's optical frequency scanning nonlinearity. The method is validated through simulations and experiments. The experimental results demonstrate that the relative phase extraction error in the fractional part is <1.5% with the proposed method and the standard deviation of absolute distance measurement is <2.4 μm.