On window size selection in the windowed Fourier ridges algorithm

The windowed Fourier ridges (WFR) algorithm can be used to extract the frequency and phase information from an exponential or carrier fringe pattern. The selection of the window size for this algorithm is investigated in this paper. For exponential phase fringe patterns, the window size does not need to be adjusted according to the signal frequency. Hence the scaling strategy of the wavelet transform is not necessary. Instead, the window size should be selected according to the balance between the linear phase approximation error and the noise level. For carrier fringe patterns, the influence of the conjugate component should also be considered. However it can be ignored when the lowest frequency of the fringe pattern is higher than 1.5/σ (σ is used to represent the window size).