A new data processing method for space-borne Fourier Transform Spectrometers

Abstract

One of the main limitations of Fourier Transform Spectrometers (FTS) is represented by their sensitivity to vibrations, which in general leads to a reduction of the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) and may generate ghosts of spectral features tricky to detect. A possible implementation to mitigate such errors is to exploit correction algorithms that allow obtaining signals sampled at constant optical path steps by processing data sampled at high frequency. In this work, a new processing method is presented, based on the arccosine method and exploiting two reference signals in the quadrature phase. Performances of the proposed method are compared to those of other algorithms by comparing an index expressing the distortion spectral lines.