White light interferometry is a well-developed and very old technique for optical measurements. The thesis describes the design of a vertical scan interferometer system to study the surface topography of surfaces down to nanometers. The desired properties of the system are its simplicity, portability and compact size, making it suitable for use in general labs and for educational purposes. By acquiring a sequence of images of the deformed fringe pattern, the surface topography can be observed, giving greater understanding of the surface roughness. The principle behind the system is coherence peak sensing where the resulting fringe pattern of the object gets changed in accordance with its surface topography. To accomplish this, individual components of the interferometer were studied and a prototype was built in the lab. A series of experiments were performed which validate the working of the system. The results of the validation which are produced in the report give the accuracy of the system. The output from the prototype interferometer is processed by MATLAB to decode the surface topography of the object under measurement. The design of the prototype is also discussed. Possible application of this device for sensing the surface topography of a cylindrical object is also put forward. Even-though the white light interferometer is more common, making them simple and cost effective will be more advantageous for the whole research community.

At present, one of the big challenges is to develop a precise surface measurement method for mechanical parts. Especially, to study cylindrical surface, the cause of many difficulties because of its geometry shape. This thesis presents a quite good solution for analyzing topography of cylindrical surface with White Light Interferometry optical system which is one of the important and suitable tools in optics. In the construction period, the aim was to build a system which can be easily mounted on the sample. This is done by a very simple and compact design that also enables us to use it in research laboratories. In the project, a cylindrical surface analysis is achieved by taking subsequent images with different nano-scale distance from the sample and stitched the acquired images. To achieve this implementation, subsequent images with the highest intensity are first determined and then located in a single image. In the stitching process, cross correlation method that is extremely useful to find out relative point of the images is used to merge the acquired images. Additionally, stitching process is helped us to extend the area where research can be done. In the project, MATLAB & LABVIEW are used for analyzing the images and controlling the motors, respectively.

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