Patent ID: 9234799
Filing Date: 2016-01-12
CPC Classification: G01J

Claim Text:
1. A method of measuring a characteristic variable of a radiation source and/or of a medium by applying interferometric inversion, the medium being crossed by radiation between the radiation source and an interferometer, the interferometer being capable of elaborating an interferogram of the radiation by creating a finite number of optical path differences between two rays having followed a same path between the radiation source and the interferometer, the method comprising: for each of the optical path differences that the interferometer is capable of using to elaborate an interferogram of the radiation, estimating a contribution of the path difference to the interferometric inversion of the characteristic variable; selecting some of the optical path differences based on the results derived from estimating a contribution of each path difference, wherein said selecting is operated without any constraints of sampling regularity, and further comprises using a quantity characterizing the characteristic variable, and iteratively performing the following steps: until a maximum number of selected path differences is reached or the quantity exceeds a preselected threshold; elaborating, with the interferometer, an interferogram of the radiation using only the selected optical path differences; and measuring the characteristic variable of the radiation source and/or medium based on information contained in the interferogram elaborated using only the selected optical path differences, without any reconstruction of a radiation spectrum from the interferogram.