Improvement of Distance Measurement Based on Dispersive Interferometry Using Femtosecond Optical Frequency Comb

Since the dispersive interferometry (DPI) based on optical frequency combs (OFCs) was proposed, it has been widely used in absolute distance measurements with long-distance and high precision. However, it has a serious problem for the traditional DPI based on the mode-locked OFC. The error of measurements caused by using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm to process signals cannot be overcome, which is due to the non-uniform sampling intervals in the frequency domain of spectrometers. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new mathematical model with a simple form of OFC to simulate and analyze various properties of the OFC and the principle of DPI. Moreover, we carry out an experimental verification, in which we adopt the Lomb–Scargle algorithm to improve the accuracy of measurements of DPI. The results show that the Lomb–Scargle algorithm can effectively reduce the error caused by the resolution, and the error of absolute distance measurement is less than 12 μm in the distance of 70 m based on the mode-locked OFC.