ANALYSIS OF DOUBLE EXPONENTIAL FLUORESCENCE DECAY BEHAVIOR FOR OPTICAL-TEMPERATURE SENSING

Algorithms based on Prony's method are proposed for the estimation of exponential time constants of a double exponential fluorescence-decay process. The performance of these algorithms is evaluated, using Monte Carlo simulations, the results of which are presented showing that th e performance of Prony's method can be greatly improved with the selec tion of an optimized observation window width and a few algorithm-rela ted parameters. The applications of these noniterative algorithms in r eal-time, quasidistributed temperature sensor systems are discussed wh ere the material decay may not approximate to a single exponential, or multimaterial sensors are used with a single, simple pump source and a single detector. Applications to quasidistributed sensor systems are considered and, thus, experimental results are presented to justify t he use of the algorithms in Prony's method in practical double exponen tial fluorescence decay sensor analysis. (C) 1997 American Institute o f Physics.