On the estimation of target spectrum for filter-array based spectrometers

Miniature spectrometers have been drawn researchers much attention due to its wide variety of possible applications. In this paper, we show the achievability of a fine spectrometer on-a-chip based on a low-performance, low-cost filter-array. A low quality filter-array is augmented with digital signal processing techniques. A series of estimators for recovering target spectrum is introduced. By exploiting non-negative nature of spectral content, a non-negative least-square algorithm is found particularly useful for spectrum recovery. The concept is verified in a hardware implementation. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America.