Estimation of velocity and size of particles from two channel laser anemometry measurements

A mathematical treatment of particle size and velocity estimation from two channel laser anemometry measurements is considered. Cramer-Rao bounds for the general case are derived, and the corresponding maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) is analysed through computer simulations. Alternative estimators are derived and their performance is characterized and compared with the performance of the MLE. It is shown that if only the size of the particle is of interest, a simple correlation-based estimator provides accurate results. Accurate velocity estimation from correlations are also possible based on a prior estimate of the particle size. The results predicted by theory are illustrated by some numerical examples.