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Cross-Correlation-Based Optical Flowmeter

Article in IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement April 2010

DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2009.2025990 Source: DBLP

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 1

Cross-Correlation Based Optical Flow-Meter

Carlos Wilson Fernandes, Maria Dias Bellar, and Marcelo Martins Werneck

1 Abstract In this paper, the development of an optical flow meter based on the cross-correlation technique is described. Two parallel
2 laser beams are made to cross a transparent pipe wherein a turbulent air flows. The laser beams are detected by two position-sensitive-
3 detectors (PSD) whose output signals are processed by software. The cross-correlation function between the signals is calculated, which
4 yields the time delay between them. The flow velocity is then obtained by the ratio of the distance between the laser beams to the time
5 delay. The flow meter is applicable for measuring pipeline flow of transparent fluids in industrial environments. An experimental
6 prototype is built and results are provided. A detailed description of the experimental set-up and of measurement procedures are
7 presented and discussed. The results have been very promising and have shown the potentiality of the system developed here for
8 performing human respiratory flow measurements in a non-invasive way.
9
10 Index TermsCross-correlation flow-meter, photo PSD, fluid flow measurement.
11

12 I. INTRODUCTION
13 ROSS-CORRELATION techniques have been applied with several types of signal sources to a wide variety of engineering
C
14 fields, which include communication systems, industrial pipeline installations, and medical instrumentation equipments.

15 The close mathematical relation between cross-correlation and frequency response methods, such as the power spectral
16 density functions, makes cross-correlation a well suited tool for system identification dynamics, especially for analyzing time
17 invariant systems, where spurious signals or noise interfere on the output measured signal.

18 In pipeline industrial installations, cross-correlation flow-meters have been particularly useful in environments with difficult
19 fluids, such as extreme temperatures, highly polluted liquids and gases, such as in sewage, and pneumatically conveyed solid
20 materials. In such conditions, sensor devices or measurement equipment must not be in contact to the fluid, and it is
21 recommended the data acquisition be done remotely [1].

22 Different technologies of cross-correlation flow-meters have been proposed, where the type of signal and the choice of sensor
23 feature the accuracy and the quality of the equipment. In general, any signal disturbed by the flow can be used to cross-correlate
24 with another one produced at some distance apart. By measuring the time difference between similar patterns produced by both
25 signals, and by knowing the actual distance between them, it is possible to calculate the flow rate. For performing this, the
26 sensing set-up usually employs two sensors for obtaining the transit time or tagged signals, from which the cross-correlation
27 calculation is done. Ultrasound, sea waves, particles movement, air bubbles in water, light and smoke, are examples of signals
28 that can be cross-correlated. It is worth mentioning the computer optical mouse, that takes 16x16-pixel pictures and correlates in
29 a two-dimension fashion each picture with the previous one, in order to determine x and y hand movements.

30 In [2] it was measured road traffic velocity by using a microphone array whereas in [3], cross correlation was applied to
31 measure air velocity field using images of particles sprayed on the air.

32 By heating the flow and measuring its thermal field with small temperature sensors it is possible to use cross correlation to
33 measure the flow. Using this technique, the authors in [4] measured fluid flow, and those in [5] measured iron core speed in
34 conveyor belt using a pulse heating marking signal.
 2

35 In [6] an ultrasonic cross-correlation flowmeter for water, based on the phase modulation analyzed by cross-correlation, was
36 presented.

37 Optical sensors can also be applied to measure velocity as demonstrated by the authors in [7]. In this work two sensors were
38 placed upstream and downstream on a hydraulic flow rig in order to detect the flow of bubbles. Then, by the cross-correlation
39 technique it was measured the velocity of the bubbles by sensing the disturbance in the flow at two proximal positions.

40 In medical applications, flow measurement based on cross-correlation has been considered for measuring human body
41 conditions, where sensors must not be invasive, generally for the sake of safety or comfortableness, or either for avoiding
42 interference in the flow. In [8], a non-invasive cross-correlation ultrasound technique is employed for detecting spatial profile of
43 coagulation damage in tissue being irradiated by laser. In [9] the respiratory flow is measured by using one single laser beam and
44 two optical fibers as sensors. In this paper, a method of flow measurement that is purely optical and non-invasive and does not
45 cause any obstruction to the flow is presented. The development procedure and results obtained from optical air flow monitoring
46 are provided. Air flow is determined by cross-correlating two scintillating signals produced by two laser beams passing through
47 the flowing fluid. The turbulent inhomogeneities of the flow are produced by heating the fluid just upstream of the two beam
48 paths.

49 Laser beams experience distortions, due to the inhomogeneities of the index of refraction of turbulent flow. In general, the
50 time difference between similar patterns produced by both beams, and the actual distance between them, are sufficient
51 information for calculating the flow rate. However, it is not always obvious the similarity of the two signals and thus the cross-
52 correlation technique is applied to precisely determine the time delay between them. In this work, the cross-correlation is made
53 off-line by having a two-channel-oscilloscope capturing the signals and later processing them by using a MATLAB algorithm.

54 The hardware prototype developed here makes possible the flow measurement of any laser-transparent fluid such as water,
55 alcohol and gases including air. A flow-meter with such proprieties would also be applicable for measuring respiratory flow, as it
56 circumvents a well-known drawback present in all commercial pneumotachometer which is its hydraulic resistor. This resistor
57 creates a pressure drop between its terminals that is measured by a differential pressure sensor. In order to create a measurable
58 pressure drop, there is a compromise between the resistance and the signal-to-noise ratio of the output signal. The drawback is
59 that the resistor interferes in the flow and slightly occludes the respiratory flow path, making it difficult to the patient to breathe
60 through, particularly neonates.

61 This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the operation principle of the proposed flow-meter is explained. Section III
62 provides a detailed description of the experimental set-up. The results and measurement issues are discussed in Section IV.
63 Finally, a conclusion is presented in Section V.

64 II. PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION

65 A. Laser Beam Propagation Through Turbulent Air

66 A laser beam, as it propagates through the atmosphere, or another transparent fluid, experiences attenuation, broadening,
67 defocusing and deflection from its initial propagation direction. These atmospheric effects impose restrictions for the use of
68 lasers in many applications such as optical communications, target reconnaissance, and remote sensing.

69 These effects are due to several characteristics and components that make up the atmosphere. They are mainly:

70 Absorption by dissolved gases and aerosols in the atmosphere such as water vapor, pollutants, haze, fog, rain and snow,
71 which causes attenuation due to loss of energy;
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72 Scattering of Rayleigh and Mie type, which causes spreading and also attenuation, but without loss of energy; it just
73 affect the directional redistribution of the beam;
74 Effects of refractive index variation, which cause scintillations and beam wandering.

75 Detailed explanations on the atmosphere effects can be found in [10]. Nevertheless, for the objective of this work, refractive
76 index changes are the key point on the fundamentals of the flow-meter developed here.

77 Air turbulence produces air parcels or cells of different sizes, densities and temperatures and, consequently, of different
78 refraction indexes. The index of refraction of air depends both on the temperature and on pressure, according to the following
79 equation:

80 (n-1)=79 x 10-6 p/T , (1)

81 where n is the index of refraction of the air inside each cell, p is the pressure of the cell in millibar and T is the temperature in
82 Kelvin.

83 When a beam of light passes through air, the randomly fluctuating air temperature produces small refractive index
84 inhomogeneities that affect the beam. The phase front produced by the laser source, for instance, starts spherical and well
85 defined, but the random fluctuations of phase velocity, which depends on the index of refraction, causes alteration and
86 redirection on the flow of energy in the beam. As the altered phase front propagates further, the beam experiences changes in
87 direction (beam wandering) and intensity fluctuation which is normally known as scintillation.

88 The necessary condition for these effects to happen is a turbulent flow and air parcels or cells of different temperatures that are
89 mixed and pushed by the air flow. Beam wandering occurs when the air cells are larger than the beam diameter. In this case they
90 act as small lenses that detour the beam from its initial direction but without loss of energy. If we project a laser beam in a screen
91 and make it pass through turbulent air with large cell packets, the laser spot will move randomly about the initial spot. This effect
92 is shown schematically in Fig. 1.

93
94 Fig. 1: Laser beam wandering: turbulent air with cells larger than the beam diameter.

95

96 On the other hand, if the laser beam diameter is larger than the turbulent cells, the movement of small index-of-refraction
97 inhomogeneities through the beam path causes random deflection and interference between different portions of the wavefront,
98 which is distorted and brakes up creating black spots. This effect is known as scintillation. If this beam is projected on a screen it
99 will show a distorted and scintillating spot, as presented in Fig. 2.
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100
101 Fig. 2: Laser beam scintillation: turbulent air with cells smaller than the beam diameter.

102

103 The constantly changing pattern of the wavefront is in fact an optical power variation. If a photodetector is placed in the beam
104 path, it will measure intensity fluctuation. However, detecting a scintillating signal can be a difficult task. This is because the
105 power fluctuation is smoothed out by an increase of the detector aperture, since only a number of statistically independent
106 portions of the intensity pattern are received. On other words, the more turbulent cells fit inside the cone of vision of the detector,
107 the less scintillating the signal will be. This effect is obvious in a clear night sky. The blinking of a star tells us that the turbulent
108 air parcels are smaller than the cone of vision of the star. However, a planet does not blink because the greater cone of vision
109 captures much more parcels that smooth out the effect.

110 In the case of a laser beam crossing a turbulent area, if scintillating signals are wanted, the sensitive area of the detector has to
111 be smaller than the beam diameter. If the beam is wandering instead of scintillating, a small area detector will produce abrupt
112 signals since the beam can miss the sensitive area during its movement. In the case of a HeNe laser whose beam is only about 0.8
113 mm in diameter, a sensor larger than this will produce no signal.

114 Since the laser beam could be either wandering or scintillating, or even presenting both effects, a simple photodetector could
115 not detect power variation. The solution for this is the position sensor detector (PSD) which consists of two large area
116 photodetectors placed 0.1 mm apart. Their output currents are amplified and connected to a differential amplifier, which yields
117 an output voltage proportional to the difference of light power incident in each photodetector of the PSD. The laser beam is made
118 to reach the middle of the device, aimed at the separation line between each half of the PSD. Since each side of the PSD receives
119 half of the laser power, the differential amplifier output is zero. As the beam wanders or scintillates, the laser power distribution
120 between the two halves of the PSD is no longer balanced, and the output voltage varies according to the beam movement or
121 scintillation. It is precisely this effect that can be used to tag a laser beam by the signature of a probed section of the flow. In this
122 case the higher the scintillation effect the better the section of the flow will be characterized. It will be shown further in this
123 paper that, if two parallel beams are made to cross the flow, the time delay between the two scintillating signals is inversely
124 proportional to the flow velocity.

125 Therefore, in order to trigger the scintillating effect one needs turbulence and temperature variations. In this work, these
126 conditions were produced by velocity-induced turbulence in a pipe and a heater in order to produce a very large Reynolds
127 number (Re>50,000) to guarantee a complete turbulent flow.

128

129 B. Cross-Correlation

130 Cross-correlation is commonly used in signal processing [12] and is defined as the correlation of a series against another series,
131 shifted by a particular number of observations or samples. Suppose two time series (xk, yk) having M samples each are described
132 as the following,
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133 [xk] = [x0, x1, x2, ...., xM1] (2)

134 [yk] = [y0, y1, y2, ...., yM1], (3)

135 then the cross-correlation function,yx , is defined as:

M =1
136 yx ( ) = x t y t + . (4)
t =0

137 In case of the signals recorded by two sensors, placed at a known distance along a pipe, xt is the function expressing the signal
138 recorded at the upstream station at the time t, and yt+ is the function expressing the signal recorded at the downstream sensor at
139 the time t+, and is the time delay (unknown) elapsed between the two signals. In order to calculate velocity, the time delay
140 between the appearance of any event at the upstream sensor and the appearance of the same event at the downstream sensor is
141 required. The time at which occurs the maximum point of the cross-correlation function, yx, corresponds to the referred time
142 delay.
143 Fig. 3 shows graphically the principle of cross correlation by using two simulated signals A and B with a time delay. If the
144 cross-correlation function is calculated as in (4), the graph shown in Fig. 4 is obtained. In this Figure, the black box shows the
145 maximum point where, X indicates the time delay, and Y indicates the correlation coefficient. If the correlation is perfect, then A
146 and B are identical, except by the time delay, and Y tends to 1. The more A and B are different, the more Y is close to zero,
147 meaning that more uncertainty occurs in the calculation of the time delay. Therefore, the maximum point in Fig 4 gives the time
148 delay one has to shift B function in order to superimpose on A function.
149 Once the instantaneous transit time (), or time delay, is provided by the cross-correlation algorithm, the flow velocity (v) can be
150 simply obtained by:
151 v= d/ , (5)
152 where d is the distance between the two beams.

153 III. EXPERIMENTAL SET-UP

154 In this section, materials, devices, equipments and procedures for undertaking the experiments are described. Fig. 5 presents a
155 schematic diagram of the experimental set-up, and in Fig. 6 the optical test-bed is presented.
156

157
158 Fig. 3: Illustration of the principle of cross-correlation by means of two identical signals with a time delay.
 6

159

160
161 Fig. 4: Cross-correlation function of signals in Fig. 3.

162
163

164
165 Fig. 5: Schematic diagram of the experimental set-up.

166
167 A turbulent air is produced by the micro fan and is heated up by a 25 /5 W resistor. The air flows through the PVC tube
168 which is connected to the glass tube (test chamber).
169 A HeNe laser beam is split by a beam splitter in order to divide the main laser beam into two parts. These two parallel, 3-mm
170 apart secondary laser beams cross the glass test chamber perpendicularly. Each laser beam is sampled by its corresponding PSD.
171 Air cells at different temperatures may occur along the tube while air is flowing.
172 At this point, different refraction indexes may occur when air cells at different temperatures are close together. The fluctuation
173 of index-of-refraction makes each laser beam to refract as it crosses the air flow inside the tube. When the beams reach the PSDs,
174 random electrical signals are produced.
175 The first laser beam, that is sensed by PSD1 (Fig. 5), is placed at 1.6 meters distance from the micro fan. At this distance, the
176 flow is completely well built up. The second laser beam is placed approximately 3 mm apart downstream from the first beam. By
177 experiments, it was verified that at this distance better cross-correlation results were obtained. The output signal from each PSD
178 is displayed by the scope, as illustrated in Fig.5.
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179
180 Fig. 6: Experimental setup

181
182 Subsequently, these signals are sent to the computer via a RS 232 serial interface where a Matlab program calculates the
183 corresponding cross-correlation function, which yields the average transit time () of the flow between the two laser beams. With
184 this result the average flow velocity is calculated by Eq. 5, since the distance between the beams is known. The Pitot tube is
185 used as a flow velocity standard for calibrating the flow-meter.

186 IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

187 During all of the experiments the temperature at the Pitot tube input and nearby the laser beams was kept at 37o C in order to
188 guarantee consistent measurements. The distance between the laser beams was approximately 3 mm. Fig. 7 presents typical
189 signals obtained from the PSDs. Their corresponding time lag is shown in this figure. These signals are applied to the cross-
190 correlation algorithm that calculates the average transit time. In this case, the transit time is equal to 1.351 ms with a fairly
191 good correlation coefficient about 0.8, as shown in Fig. 8. Then the corresponding flow velocity can be calculated by (5).
192 Several measurements of flow velocities were done in a range between 2.1 m/s and 4.5 m/s. In Table 1, the transit times
193 obtained with the flow-meter are shown together with the velocity measurements provided by the Pitot tube. In order to calculate
194 the flow velocity through Eq. 5, it is necessary to know the exact distance, d, between the two laser beams. However,
195 uncertainty is there, since the measurement of d, which initially was considered equal to 3 mm, is very difficult to accomplish.
196 The reason for this is that, the laser beam presents a Gaussian shape with only 0.8 mm in diameter. Therefore, even using a
197 digital caliper, it is impossible to define exactly where the beam borders are. Nevertheless, with (5) one can calculate the exact
198 value of d by means of the velocity produced by the Pitot tube, which is considered to be exact, and of the time delay measured
199 for that particular velocity. The calculated values of d (dcal) for each velocity are shown in Table 1. From these values, one can
200 find the average distance (davg=2.81 mm) with a standard deviation (SD=0.00295). This distance is fairly close to the initially
201 supposed value equal to 3 mm.
202 Now, by applying davg=2.81 mm as a calibration factor for the whole set of measurements, it is possible to calculate the
203 velocity, as shown in the fourth column of Table 1, and to plot the calibration curve of the flow meter, as it is illustrated in Fig. 9.
204 The corresponding regression coefficient, R, is 0.99999, which presents a very good accuracy.
205
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206
207 Fig.7: PSD output signals with time delay.

208

209
210 Fig. 8: Cross-correlation of the PSD signals shown in Fig.7 with transit time equal to 1.35 x 10-3 s.

211
212 Table 1: Experimental and calculated results

Standard Transit Time dcal Calculated

Velocity (m/s) (ms) (davg=2.81 mm) Velocity (m/s)

2.1 1.36 2.86 2.10

2.5 1.11 2.78 2.50
3.0 0.94 2.82 3.00
3.2 0.88 2.82 3.20
3.8 0.73 2.77 3.79
4.2 0.67 2.81 4.19
213
214 For velocities below 2 m/s the correlation coefficients become smaller, which makes the uncertainty of the measurements to
215 increase. The reason for this is that, the structure of the cell packages change due to the Brownian motion of the cells as the flow
216 pushes them downstream. For a transit time greater than 1.4 ms the signals shown in Fig 7 are so different from each other that
 9

217 there is no more correlation between them. In order to measure smaller velocities, it would be necessary to place the two beams
218 about 1 mm apart which, in practice, is a very difficult task due to the finite width of the mirrors. Moreover, smaller beam
219 distances decrease the accuracy for higher speeds, as the transit time becomes very small. A possible solution to this could be a
220 mechanically adjusted beam separation, or several parallel laser beams, associated to an automatic system to select the proper
221 pair according to the flow velocity.

4.5

R=0.99999
SD=0.00298
4.0

Calculated velocity (m/s) 3.5

3.0

2.5

2.0

2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

Standard Velocity (m/s)

222
223 Fig. 9: Velocity measurements.

224

225 V. CONCLUSIONS

226 This work presents an experimental development of a flow-meter based on laser beams, two optical sensors and the cross-
227 correlation technique. The quality of the results was carefully analyzed through several indexes. The feasibility and practicality
228 of the system are established. Though the cross-correlation method is not new for flow measurements, its usage associated with
229 PSDs for measuring air flow is not found in the literature so far. The results presented here show it is possible to develop non-
230 invasive respiratory flow-meters, especially suitable for neonates.
231

232 REFERENCES
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247 [9] N. A. Sigaki, M. M. Werneck, and P. A. M. dos Santos, Cross-correlation Techniques Applied to Optical Sensor for Respiratory Flow Measurements, in
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253

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