Miniaturized laser spectroscopy capable of in situ and real-time ppb-level trace gas sensing is of fundamental importance for numerous applications, including environment monitoring, industry process control, and biomedical diagnosis. Benchtop laser spectroscopy systems based on direct absorption, photoacoustic, and Raman effects exhibit high sensitivity but face challenges for in situ and real-time gas sensing due to their bulky size, slow response, and offline sampling. We demonstrate a microscale high-performance all-fiber photoacoustic spectrometer integrating the key components, i.e., the photoacoustic gas cell and the optical microphone, into a single optical fiber tip with a diameter of 125 μm. Without a long optical path to enhance the light–gas interaction, the fiber-tip gas cell with acoustic-hard boundary tightly confines and amplifies the local photoacoustic wave, compensating for the sensitivity loss during miniaturization. This localized acoustic wave is demodulated by high-sensitivity fiber-optic interferometry, enabling a ∼9 ppb detection limit for acetylene gas approaching the benchtop system. The microscale fiber spectrometer also exhibits a short response time of ∼18 ms and a subnanoliter sample volume, not only suitable for routine real-time in situ trace gas measurement but also inspiring new applications such as two-dimensional gas flow concentration mapping and in vivo intravascular blood gas monitoring as showcased.
KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, Matrices, Pulse signals, Time metrology, Reflectometry, Modulation, Backscatter, Spatial resolution, Signal detection
In this paper an Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) sensing method based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology is proposed. In this system, the probe signal consist of multiple Simplex coded sequences which modulated onto different orthogonal sub-carriers. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the system can be improved by the coding gain of the Simplex codes. Meanwhile, different pulsed sequences can be sent into the fiber simultaneously, which solves the time-consuming problem of the traditional coded OTDR. In the Simplex coding OTDR distributed sensing system based on OFDM technology built by this method, compared with a 50 ns single pulse, the SNR of the fiber end of the 31-bit coding curve is improved by 4.42 dB, and the measurement time is reduced by 96.77% compared to traditional Simplex coding OTDR system.
Optical fiber enables the implementation of flexible medical endoscopes. Here, we present the development of fiber-optic endoscopic ultrasound, which utilizes laser pulse absorption to generate ultrasound waves and a fiber-optic acoustic sensor to detect echo waves. Compared to its piezoelectric counterpart, the fiber-optic sensor has a significantly higher detection sensitivity and broader bandwidth. As a result, we were able to perform in vivo rotational-scanning (or B-mode) imaging of the gastrointestinal tract and extraluminal structures of a rat with an operating frequency of 20 MHz, an imaging depth of 2 cm, and a frame rate of 1 Hz.
Helical-core fibers have been widely utilized for various applications such as orbital angular momentum manipulation, optical filtering, and sensing. In this work, we demonstrate the sensitivity enhancement of a helical-core fiber by tailoring the resonance wavelength towards the dispersion turning point (DTP) utilizing a post chemical etching process. When the sensor works at different dispersion points, the responses of the device on external parameters, including mechanical torsion, temperature, strain, and external refractive index are investigated and compared. Tailoring the resonance wavelength of the helical-core fiber towards the dispersion turning point in the post chemical etching process significantly enhances the sensitivity to various kinds of parameters, which provides an avenue for modifying and optimizing performances of optical devices.
Single nanoparticle detection is demanding in fields such as early-stage diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and biochemical research. Optical whispering-gallery microcavities have high quality factors (Q factors) and small mode volumes, and mechanical oscillations can thus be excited by the strongly confined optical mode field. The mechanical mode frequency varies when the analyte attaches to the microcavity, and thus acts as an excellent sensing signal for single nanoparticle mass detection. In this work, we demonstrated the mass sensitivity dependence of mechanical modes on different cavity modes, the sensing sites, and the microcavity geometries, providing a way for optimizing the detection limit when designing a microcavity sensor.
We propose and demonstrate a high-resolution and high-sensitivity tunable liquid refractive index (RI) sensor interrogated using a microwave photonic filter (MPF) with two taps implemented based on optical polarization orthogonality. In the structure, a fiber laser with its wavelength determined by a microfiber Bragg grating (mFBG) is employed as a light source. A chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) is incorporated in one tap, and an optical tunable delay line (TDL) is included in the other tap. The sensing information is encoded in the laser wavelength caused by the RI change, which will cause a change in the time delay difference between the two taps due to the wavelength-dependent group delay of the CFBG, which would result in a change in the MPF frequency response. By monitoring the spectral response, the sensing information is detected. The spectral response of the MPF is tuned by controlling the length of the TDL, which would lead to a change in the sensor sensitivity. An experiment is performed. The results show, for three TDL time delays of 300 ps, 400 ps and 500 ps, the liquid RI sensitivities are 50.621 GHz/ RIU, 37.293 GHz/RIU and 26.015 GHz/RIU, respectively, and the corresponding resolutions are 8.0253×10-5 RIU, 1.0893×10-4 RIU and 1.5616×10-4 RIU.
A real-time gas vacuum sensor interrogated based on a microwave photonic method at high speed and high resolution is proposed and demonstrated. The sensor is a microfiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (mMZI) with its wavelength sensitive to the gas concentration. Instead of detecting the wavelength shift of the mMZI spectrum in the optical domain, we convert the mMZI spectrum to the time domain by spectral shaping and wavelength-to-time (SS-WTT) mapping and apply a digital signal processor (DSP) to realize the cross-correlation to estimate the wavelength shift of the mMZI. The sensitivity and resolution of the proposed gas vacuum sensor are -0.586 ps/ppm and 34.13 ppm with a concentration range from 0 to 1.4×104 ppm, respectively.
We present the all-fiber approach towards building a miniatured, optical-resolution photoacoustic endoscope. The catheter encapsulates two optical fibers for optical excitation and ultrasound detection, respectively. The ultrasound waves are detected with the laser-based fiber optic sensor, with a diameter of 125 μm, instead of a focused piezoelectric transducer. Photoacoustic endoscopic images from a rat rectum have been acquired in vivo with a range of 6.3 mm, a lateral resolution of 10 μm, and a 285° angular field-of-view. The catheter has a diameter of 2.3 mm and can be further reduced by replacing the bulk prism reflector.
A high speed TFBG-SPR sensing demodulation system based on microwave photonics interrogation is proposed theoretically. The wavelength shifting of the SPR envelope in optical domain is converted to the microwave pulse shifting in time domain. The RI resolution is improved by one order of magnitude compared with wavelength demodulation, and the sensing speed is as high as 40 KHz.
As one of the most proven fiber optic sensors, novel fiber Bragg gratings are continually investigated to extend their roles in extreme environments. In this paper, a newly found “secondary Bragg grating” (SBG) is proposed. The presence of SBG occurs in the case of the type-IIa Bragg grating inscribed in small active fibers, where an additional resonance appears at the shorter wavelength. The SBG provides a variety of interesting characteristics, such as the dip integration, high temperature resistance and high reflectivity, showing promising potential in high temperature sensing.
In fast functional photoacoustic microscopy (FPAM), the detection and monitoring of the oxygen saturation are important to monitor tissue functionality and disease progress. FPAM needs multi-wavelength pulsed laser sources with high pulse repetition rates, sufficient pulse energies and short wavelength switching time. Here, we develop a multi-wavelength pulsed laser source based on the stimulated Raman-scattering effect. The new laser is based on a 532-nm 1-MHz pulsed laser. The 532-nm laser pulse is split into two beams: one pumps a 5-m optical fiber to excite a 558-nm wavelength via stimulated Raman scattering; the other one propagates through a 50-m optical fiber to delay the pulse by 220 nano second so that the excitation wavelengths can be separated in time for fast functional photoacoustic imaging. The two beams are spatially combined and coupled into an optical fiber for photoacoustic excitation. Consequently, the new laser source can generate 2 million pulses per second, switch wavelengths in 220 ns, and provide hundreds of nano-Joules pulse energy for each wavelength. Using this laser source, we demonstrate optical-resolution photoacoustic imaging of microvascular structure and oxygen saturation in the mouse ear. The ultrashort wavelength switching time enables oxygen saturation imaging of flowing single red blood cells.
Label-free fiber optical biosensor has a promising prospect in “point-of-care” (POC) test for disease diagnosis. A sensitive label-free fiber-optic based immunosensor for quantitative Cardiac Troponin I (cTn-I) testing has been proposed by using a phase-shifted Bragg grating directly inscribed in microfiber. The fine notch signal in the grating spectrum remarkably enhances the ability of the sensor in detecting an extremely small amount of immune binding events, which is essential for AMI diagnosis at very early stage. A cTn-I concentration of 6 pg/mL is enough to arouse the response of the sensor with high specificity. According to the log-linear range of the concentration between 0.1-10 ng/mL, measurements with shorter detection time are analyzed to demonstrate the potential of the sensor in the fast screen of the high-risk patients. The proposed sensing probe is compact and feasible, easy to handle, fabricate and network, making itself a competitive candidate in POC diagnosis of AMI.
We have developed a chip-scale optofluidic sensor for biomolecular detection, by tapering laterally aligned silica microfiber and capillary to form a modal interferometer. With the pre-immobilization of DNA probes, the sensor is capable of selectively detecting single-stranded microRNA-let7a (molecular weight: 6.5 k) by measuring the spectral shift of the interferometric spectrum. A log-linear response from 2 nM to 20 μM and a minimum detectable concentration of 212 pM (1.43 ng/mL) have been achieved. The sensor is promising for future diagnosis applications due to its high sensitivity, resistance to environmental perturbations, improved portability, and intrinsic connection to fiber optic measurement.
A compact fiber grating laser has been exploited as an ultrasound sensor to probe optically induced spherical elastic waves, taking advantage of its response in beat-frequency variation of the laser output. Optical-resolution photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) is further implemented with such a sensor by raster scanning the excitation light with a 2-axis galvo scanner. A PAM image of mouse ear with a field width of 2 mm is demonstrated. The wide field-of-view of the sensor allows the implementation of fast-scanning PAMs which is attractive for in vivo imaging applications.
A vector magnetic field sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) of a 15° tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) and magnetic fluid is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Both the orientation and the amplitude of the magnetic fields can be determined unambiguously via the wavelength and intensity monitoring of the SPR, which is essentially dominated by the arrayed Fe3O4 nanoparticles over the nanometric-film of fiber surface.
A novel fiber-to-fiber tip-reflection sensing configuration for power-referenced refractometry with the capability to measure surrounding refractive index (SRI) as low as 1.33 is proposed and demonstrated. A short D-shaped fiber stub is parallel adjacent to another unshaped fiber containing a weakly tilted Bragg grating (TFBG). Light from the unshaped fiber can be effectively coupled into the adjacent D-shaped fiber through the TFBG which functions as a "bridge" between the core and cladding. Strong "comb" like cladding modes over a broad wavelength range have been recaptured in D-shaped fiber in reflection. These re-coupled cladding modes show different amounts of power as the SRI changes and the sensitivity is much higher than reported in-fiber sensing schemes, especially for low SRI measurement.
An ultra-thin silver-coated tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) sensor with clear surface plasmon resonance (SPR) together with strong evanescent wave in transmission for "surface" and "bulk" surrounding refractive index (SRI) measurement is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The thickness of the silver coating over the fiber surface is precisely controlled at 12~16 nm (much thinner than 40~50 nm for traditional SPR excitation). The transmission spectrum of the sensor provides a fine comb of narrowband resonances that overlap with the broader absorption of the surface plasmon and thus provide a unique tool to measure small shifts of the plasmon and identify the "surface" SRI changes with high accuracy. Meanwhile, the ultra-thin nanometric-coating permits part of high-order cladding modes to become leaky modes which have a large sensitivity to variations in the background solution for "bulk" SRI measurement. Experimental results show that above two resonances have an inverse amplitude responses to the SRI changing. Biological solutions (urine of rats with different concentration of Aquaporin) with different RI ranging from 1.3400 to 1.3408 were clearly discriminated in-situ by using the differential amplitude monitoring between “cut-off” cladding resonance and plasmonic resonance, with an amplitude variation sensitivity of ~8100 dB/RIU and a limit of detection of ~10-5 RIU.
A fiber-optic Doppler velocimeter based on a dual-polarization fiber grating laser is demonstrated. The fiber grating laser produces two orthogonally polarized laser outputs with their frequency difference proportional to the intra-cavity birefringence. When the laser outputs are reflected from a moving targets, the laser frequencies will be shifted due to the Doppler effect. It shows that the frequency difference between the beat note of the laser outputs and the beat note of the reflected lasers is proportional to the velocity. The proposed fiber-optic Doppler velocimeter shows a high sensitivity of 0.64 MHz/m/s and is capable of measurement of wide range of velocity.
We propose and design a high-birefringence two-core photonic crystal fiber for simultaneous measurement of pressure and temperature. One core is centered, while the other is off-center. Both cores are made non-circular by properly modifying the sizes of some air-holes surrounding them. This introduces geometric modal birefringence to the fiber. When a broadband light launches into the centered core and transmits for a few centimeters, the output spectrum is sinusoid-like due to the intermodal coupling of the supermodes guided by the two cores. For x-polarized input light, we find it has a pressure sensitivity of 21.7 pm/MPa and a temperature sensitivity of 11.6 pm/C; for y-polarized input light, we find it has a pressure sensitivity of 18.0 pm/MPa and a temperature sensitivity of 10.7 pm/C. Hence, simultaneous measurement of pressure and temperature can be achieved by using a matrix method.
In this paper, an abnormal grating evolution was recorded during microfiber Bragg grating (mFBG) inscription under 193nm excimer laser. Within 20 minutes exposing, a Type IIa FBG could be obtained with above 20dB strength in 8.5 μm microfiber. This regenerated mFBG had good survival ability against high temperature up to 800 °C. Moreover, the strain response of the regenerated grating was enlarged by the microfiber structure. Thus, highly sensitive strain sensor with considerable temperature resistance could be obtained, which had potential applications in gas/oil and aerospace territory.
Phase separation process of poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) aqueous solution was investigated by tapered optical fiber technique in this work. The optical transmission spectra revealed the transition of molecular conformation and aggregation of molecular chains in the course of phase separation and identified the lower critical solution temperatures (LCST) in a simple and clear way. It was found that upon heating PNIPAM chains changed from expanded coils to collapsed globules and then aggregated. It offers a new characterization technique for studying phase separation of polymer solutions or blends, and could provide abundant information of the interaction between two different macromolecules, revealing the internal mechanism of the interaction.
A high sensitivity biosensor based on graphene coated silica fiber taper interferometer is presented. Thank to the combination of graphene coating and the optical fiber taper interferometer structure, the biosensor demonstrates improved DNA concentration sensitivity of 0.4 nm/log M and good linearity, yielding the lower detection limit of 10 pM. This high sensitivity and biocompatibility enable the biosensor in precision in-situ DNA detection, even in ultra-diluted DNA solution. Based on our work, the graphene coating could convert the concentration information of target molecular to the RI variation, and further to light signals by the taper.
The beat frequency dependence of the sensitivity for a Faraday-rotation based heterodyning fiber laser magnetic field sensor is studied, which shows that lower beat frequency results in higher sensitivity. By lowering the beat frequency to 2 MHz, the maximum sensitivity of about 43 Hz/μT to magnetic field has been achieved for a heterodyning fiber laser inscribed on an Erbium doped fiber. It also shows that the beat frequency is dependent on the polarization of the 980 nm pump. Therefore, dynamical tuning of the sensitivity optically has also been demonstrated by tuning the polarization of the 980 nm pump.
We realize a microdroplet-etched fiber Fabry-Perot resonator. Strong polarization discrimination is achieved due to the asymmetric fiber cross section in the cavity, which should be useful for improving the measurement precision in the refractive index (RI) sensing application. The measured RI sensitivities are ~133.8 nm/RI-unit for the x polarization and 117.1 nm/RI-unit for the y polarizations, respectively. Simultaneously, the temperature effect can be eliminated by monitoring the peak difference of the two polarizations, which have the similar temperature coefficient but different RI responses.
The noise performance of the beat note generated by a dual-polarization fiber grating laser is very critical for sensing applications. To reduce the noise of the beat note, external optical feedback is employed with a fiber Bragg grating as a reflector. It then shows that a longer feedback time results in larger noise reduction. With a 50 m single mode fiber as the delay line, more than 20 dB phase noise reduction has been achieved for a dual-polarization fiber grating laser which shows a phase noise of -92 dBc/Hz @ 10 kHz offset with external optical feedback applied.
We demonstrate an accelerometer based on a dual-frequency DBR fiber laser with a resolution of 6 μg/Hz1/2 at 1 kHz. The accelerometer is implemented by mounting a 250-milligram proof mass onto the laser cavity and converting the vibration into change in beat frequency between the two orthogonal polarization lasing modes. Experimental result shows that the sensitivity reaches 1.7 MHz/g at 1 kHz with a working bandwidth over 1 kHz. The high resolution is also a result of the noise level as low as 10 Hz/Hz1/2 due to the compensation between the two lasing modes. The present accelerometer with extremely high resolution and light weight is promising for geophysical applications.
We investigate the spectral characteristics of Brillouin scattering in micro-scaled silica fibers with diameter of ~2μm. A multiple-peak structure in contrast to the conventional counterparts is observed. The measured temperature and strain sensitivities are ~0.8MHz/°C and ~0.05MHz/με, respectively, corresponding to a fiber diameter of 2.01μm. A comparison with the conventional single-mode fiber is made in our manuscript.
A novel fiber-optic magnetic field sensor is proposed by embedding a heterodyning fiber laser into an epoxy resin bonded magnetostrictive composite material with Terfenol-D particles doped. The magnetic field induced strain in the magnetostrictive composite material is converted to transversal stress by a structure which is applied to the fiber laser to produce beat note frequency changes for measurement. The response of the proposed sensor is measured, which shows a quite good directivity with a sensitivity of 10.5 Hz/μT to magnetic field and a large measurable range up to about 0.3 T.
We demonstrate an all-solid photonic bandgap fiber modal interferometer by concatenating two tapers separated with a middle section of the fiber. Unlike the conventional devices, our structure has a lower effective index in the core and a higher effective index in the cladding, which produce novel sensing characteristics. The measured sensing sensitivities are ~63pm/°C for temperarure and ~1.74nm/N for the axial stress, respectively.
Broadband-trimming band-rejection filters based on chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings (CTFBG) are proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The flexible chirp-rate and wide tilt-angle provide the gratings with broadband filtering functions over a large range of bandwidth (from 10 nm to 150 nm), together with a low transmission loss (less than 1 dB) and a negligible back-reflection (lower than 20 dB). The slope profile of CTFBG in transmission can be easily tailored by adjusting the tilt angle, grating irradiation time and chirp rate-grating factor, and it is insensitive to polarization of launch condition. Furthermore, by coating the CTFBG with a suitable polymer (whose refractive index is close to that of the cladding glass), the cladding modes no longer form weakly discrete resonances and leave a smoothly varying attenuation spectrum for high-quality band rejection filters, edge filters and gain equalizers.
A highly-birefringent elliptic microfiber is fabricated by use of the CO2-laser machining and fusion tapering methods. The fiber ellipse can be well controlled with modification of the CO2 laser output power. Both positive and negative sensitivities are observed for the structure to be used in the refractive index sensing application, in contrast to the previously-reported microfiber devices. Moreover, the maximum obtained sensitivity is as high as 195348nm/RIU (refractive index unit) around refractive index of 1.35887, which is one order of magnitude higher than other microfiber counterparts. The temperature-cross sensitivity of 0.007nm/°C is quite low.
A magnetic field sensor is demonstrated by placing a bent-fiber taper modal interferometer inside a magnetic fluid sealed with an organic glass base. Owing to the strong refractive index dependency of the interferometer and magneto-optics property of the fluid, our sensor exhibits high sensitivity to the external magnetic field change. A linear wavelength dependency of ~58pm/Oe is experimentally obtained within a magnetic field range from 30 to 80 Oe. Our structure is featured of high sensitivity, fiber-compatibility, compactness, and robustness.
We report the fabrication and characterization of an in-line photonic crystal fiber optofluidic refractometer assisted by a C-shaped fiber. The C-shaped fiber spliced between the PCF and the SMF enables simultaneous in-line optical signal delivery and analyte fluid feeding. Using an arc discharge technique, we achieve selective exploitation of only the central two voids of the PCF for microfluidic sensing. Based on a Sagnac interferometer, a highly sensitive refractometer with sensitivity of 8699 nm/RIU and detection limit of 10–6 for RI around 1.333 was achieved experimentally, which agrees well with the theoretical value of 8675 nm/RIU.
We demonstrated a highly sensitive evanescent-wave-based water salinity sensor using a rectangular optical microfiber Sagnac interferometer. The microfiber has a rectangular cross-section with widths of 4.0 μm by 2.5 μm and total length of 36 mm. For water salinity from 0‰ to 40‰, a high sensitivity of 1.95 nm/(1‰) was achieved at the wavelength of 1550 nm, indicating a detection limit of 0.01‰. The proposed sensor has advantages of high sensitivity, compact size, ease for fabrication, and potentially low-cost. It is very useful for undersea applications and manufacture process controlling where monitoring small change in water salinity is required.
We demonstrate multiwavelength fiber lasers by incorporating the micro Michelson interferometer with spatial mode beating phenomenon, which comes from the interferences among cladding modes, into ring cavity for high resolution linear and angular displacement sensing.
We have proposed a novel magnetic field sensor based on orthogonally-polarized dual-frequency fiber laser and Faraday effect. In this paper, we propose a method to enhance the sensitivity of such Faraday effect based heterodyning fiber laser magnetic field sensor by tuning the intra-cavity intrinsic linear birefringence. We demonstrate that the sensitivity to magnetic field intensity is inversely proportional to the linear birefringence. A CO2-laser treatment is therefore proposed to tune the intra-cavity linear birefringence. With CO2-laser treatment to lower the intra-cavity linear birefringence, the sensitivities of heterodyning fiber laser sensors to magnetic field can be enhanced.
Microfiber Bragg gratings (mFBGs) can be used as cost-effective and relatively simple-to-implement biosensors for monitoring DNA interactions in situ. The sensors are functionalized by a monolayer of poly-L-lysine (PLL) with the specific molecular recognition probe DNA sequences to bind with high specificity to a given target. By recording the wavelength seperation between the two resonant peaks of a single mFBG, the mFBG biosensor is capable of detecting the presence of specific target DNA in situ.
We demonstrate the ability of a fiber grating laser with dual-polarization, single-longitudinal-mode output to measure an extremely small mass (or transverse load). The minimum detectable mass is 0.28 milligram by reducing the noise level of the output beat signal.
High sensitivity biological sample measurements have been achieved by using a 12o tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG). Human acute leukemia cells with different intracellular densities and refractive index (RI) ranging from 1.3342 to 1.3344 were clearly discriminated in-situ by using the differential transmission spectrum between two orthogonal polarizations for the last guided mode resonance before “cut-off”, with an amplitude variation sensitivity of 1.8×104 dB/RIU and a limit of detection of 2×10-5 RIU. The technique is inherently temperature-insensitive.
We demonstrate an acid-based sensor from the biofuncationalized microfiber Bragg grating. By electrostatic selfassembly layer-by-layer technique, the film consisting of sodium alginate which has hygroscopic response to the potential of hydrogen is coated on the fiber surface. Consequently, the refractive index variation of the sensing film caused by water absorption can be measured by mFBG’s higher order mode peak which can be translated into pH value information. The sensitivity of the sensor is received as high as 265pm/pH.
We demonstrated an in-line open cavity Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI) for liquid refractive index sensing with linear response and high sensitivity. The FPI was fabricated by splicing a short piece of C-shaped fiber (tens of micrometers) between two standard single-mode fibers. The refractive index response of the FPI was characterized by ethanol-water mixtures in the range of 1.33 to 1.36, and a high sensitivity of 1294 nm/RIU at the wavelength of 1550 nm was achieved. The sensor was used to measure the thermo-optic coefficient of pure water, and the results agree well with the literature.
The polarimetric sensing characteristics of multi-mode-fiber based tilted fiber Bragg grating (MMF-TFBG) have been analyzed and experimentally demonstrated. The physical “enlarged” fiber core enables the tilted gratings to excite multi high-order core modes with significantly different polarization dependence and well-defined “comb” profiles which are spectrally separated at different wavelength. Orientation-recognized twist/rotation measurement (-90o to 90o) has been achieved with sensitivity of 0.075 dB/deg by using a cost-effective double-path power detection (power monitoring of two orthogonal-polarimetric odd core-modes, i.e. LP11 and LP12).
We propose and demonstrate a simple multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) scheme based on a WaveShaper. The WaveShaper can not only act as a multichannel filter but can also introduce wavelength-dependent loss (WDL) in the laser cavity. The WDL can effectively suppress the mode competition caused by the homogeneous gain broadening of the EDF. As a result, up to an 11-wavelength lasing operation with a wavelength spacing of 0.8 nm has been achieved. The power distribution among wavelengths is uniform and the measured power fluctuation of each wavelength is less than 1 dB.
We demonstrate a highly-sensitive current sensor by packaging a single taper-based modal interferometer into a copper
tube that is filled with alcohol and surrounded with chrome-nickel wire. As the flowing current in the chrome-nickel wire
is changed, the interference spectrum varies accordingly with sensitivity as high as 1014.5 nm/A2 . Our results are
promising for the current sensing and the electric-tunable filtering.
We carried out distributed measurements of the parametric Brillouin gain using a sensing technique based on an
Brillouin optical time-domain analysis. Using this distributed technique, we study the influence of the polarization mode
dispersion (PMD) of the single mode fiber (SMF) to the Brillouin parametric gain spectrum. It is found that the shape of
the obtained spectrum depend on the local birefringence of the fiber.
We demonstrate a temperature-independent displacement sensor by inscribing a periodic grating in a microfiber taper with assistance of the 193-nm ultraviolet exposure technique. The obtained bandwidth is as large as 29.64nm for the grating with diameter of 3.8~6.38μm and length of 6.2mm, respectively. When the displacement is increased from 0 to 1.08mm, the reflecting bandwidth reduces to 3.38nm gradually, producing an average sensitivity of around −22.8nm/mm. The minimum displacement of measurement is ~4.39×10−4mm considering the wavelength resolution of 10pm in the optical spectrum analyzer. Moreover, the temperature-cross sensitivity is suppressed.
High current sensitivity is obtained based on a microfiber that is wrapping around a chrome-nickel (CrNi) wire. Due to the strong heating effect of the CrNi wire with the flowing electric current, the mode index and the loop length of microfiber are changed, resulting in the shift of resonant wavelength. The measured current responsivity is as high as 220.65nm/A2, which is in two or three magnitude orders than the previously-obtained ones. We study the influence of component size to the structure performance, which is useful for future applications of current sensing or tuning devices.
In this paper, the output beat signal of the polarimetric heterodyning fiber grating laser sensor has been stabilized based on the investigation of polarization effect on the beat frequency. The short-term frequency fluctuation has been reduced from 1.5 MHz to about 0.1 MHz and the resolution of the sensors is greatly improved.
This paper gives an experimental study on Brillouin scattering property in an all solid photonics bandgap fiber (ASPBGF) using tapering technique. There are four Brillouin resonance peaks, one from the pure silica core and three from microstructure cladding of the AS-PBGF. We report Brillouin frequency shift and linewidth of the fiber. Because these four peaks show the different temperature and strain dependence, the simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain can be achieved.
Optically heated fiber Bragg gratings due to the absorption over the fiber core in rare-earth doped fibers are experimentally demonstrated. Bragg wavelength variations with pump power are measured for different fibers. We found that the Er/Yb-codoped fiber presents the strongest thermal effect, due to the high absorption. A maximum wavelength shift of 1.34 nm can be obtained when the 980 nm pump power is 358 mW under room temperature, suggesting the fiber is heated up to over 100 °C. Furthermore, the thermal effect is enhanced by pumping the surrounding air to close to vacuum. A wavelength shift of 1.69 nm is attained, due to the weakened ability of heat transfer at the silica-air interface. The optical heating presents a very short response time and can found applications in low temperature circumstances.
We demonstrate an ultrasensitive temperature sensor by sealing a highly-birefringent microfiber into an alcoholinfiltrated copper capillary. With a Sagnac loop configuration, the interferometric spectrum is strongly dependent on the external refractive index (RI) with sensitivity of 36800nm/RIU around RI=1.356. As mainly derived from the ultrahigh RI sensitivity, the temperature response can reach as high as −14.72 nm/°C in the range of 30.9-36.9 °C. The measured response time is ~8s, as determined by the heat-conducting characteristic of the device and the diameter of the copper capillary. Our sensor is featured with low cost, easy fabrication and robustness.
We demonstrated a simple method for temperature-independent refractive index measurement by use of two cascaded fiber Bragg gratings fabricated in single-mode fiber and microfiber, respectively. The reflective peaks of the two FBGs exhibit almost identical temperature sensitivity of 10.1 pm/°C and different responses to ambient refractive index. Based on the differential measurement method, of the issue of temperature cross-sensitivity for FBG sensors is solved. The refractive-index sensitivity of the sensor is 17.22 nm/RIU when the diameter of microfiber is 6.5 μm.
In this paper, we demonstrate a hydrostatic pressure sensor based on a liquid filled solid-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF). A single cladding hole of the PCF is selectively filled with the assistance of femtosecond laser micromachining. The filled PCF presents several loss dips in the transmission spectrum due to the resonant couplings from the core mode to the LP11 liquid modes. Pressure measurement is performed by monitoring the wavelength shift of the dips. The pressure sensitivities are -0.452 and -0.621nm/MPa for two of them, respectively.
A silicon steel sheet is proposed in this paper to work as a magnetic field concentrator to enhance the sensitivity of a Faraday effect based magnetic field sensor using a dual-polarization fiber grating laser. When the silicon steel sheet is placed close to the cavity of the fiber grating laser, the magnetic field is concentrated around the silicon steel sheet and hence the fiber grating laser experience stronger magnetic field than the case without the silicon steel sheet, which results in a larger magnetic field induced beat note frequency change after photodetection of the two orthogonally polarized laser outputs. With the same axial magnetic field, the experiment results confirm that the sensitivity of the sensor with a silicon steel sheet is improved over the one without a silicon steel sheet, which validates our proposal.
A Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) based on a pair of long period gratings (LPGs) fabricated by silica microfiber for sensing applications is demonstrated. Each LPG with only 6 deformations was fabricated by using a pulsed CO2 laser to periodically modify the surface of the microfiber through only one scanning cycle. Owing to the relatively large effective refractive index (RI) difference between the fundamental and higher order modes of the microfiber LPG, the size of the microfiber MZI can reach as short as 8.84mm when the diameter of the microfiber is 9.5μm. The microfiber MZI can exhibit a high sensitivity of around 2225nm per refractive index unit and temperature sensitivity of only 11.7 pm/°C. Featured with the easy fabrication, excellent compactness, high sensitivity and stability, the microfiber MZI has potential in the microfiber-based devices and sensors.
A dual-polarization fiber grating laser is proposed to sense a magnetic field by attaching the fiber laser to a copper wire. When an electrical current is injected into the copper wire and a perpendicular magnetic field is applied, the current generates Ampere force to squeeze the fiber laser and change the birefringence inside the laser cavity, resulting in beat note frequency change. The magnetic field induced beat note frequency change can be discriminated from environment disturbances by applying an alternating current, which therefore demonstrates a novel miniature fiber-optic magnetic field sensor with high sensitivity and inherent immunity to disturbances.
We demonstrate four-port long-period gratings formed by winding an optical microfiber with another thinner
microfiber. The surrounding thinner microfiber not only induces a strong refractive-index perturbation in the center
microfiber, but also collects and leads out the light resonantly coupled from the fundamental mode to high-order
modes, providing flexibility for applications as optical filters and sensors. The devices exhibit temperature
sensitivity of 7.6 pm/°C, strain sensitivity of -10.6 pm/μ(epsilon) and refractive-index sensitivity of 2012.6 nm/RIU.
We demonstrated a novel method for temperature-independent refractive index measurement by use of a Bragg grating
fabricated in a highly birefringent rectangular microfiber. The two reflective peaks corresponding to two polarization
axes exhibit almost identical temperature sensitivity of 12.01 pm/°C and different responses to ambient refractive index
of 38.9 and 46nm/RIU at RI of 1.36, respectively. By monitoring the wavelength separation between the two peaks,
temperature-independent refractive index measurement can be achieved.
A compact microfiber sensor is implemented with the twist of a continuous rectangular microfiber. The structure can exhibit extremely-high sensitivity of around 24,373nm per refractive-index unit and temperature stability of better than 0.005nm/oC, implying a great suppression of cross-sensitivity. Thia sensor is featured with compact size, high sensitivity, easy fabrication, robustness, and low connection loss with all-fiber system.
The Brillouin scattering spectrum of a photonic crystal fiber was measured experimentally by core-offset splicing to a
single mode fiber. One main peak and five sub-peaks due to Brillouin scattering were identified and their frequency and
intensity dependences on strain and temperature were investigated in detail. Besides the frequency shift, the intensity of
the Brillouin scattering was also found to vary with strain and temperature changes. It is then expected to solve the
problem of cross sensitivity in the conventional single-mode fibers.
An incoherent microwave photonic filter (MPF), based on multiwavelength phase modulation (PM) and a WaveShaper, is proposed and investigated. The multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser provides multiple taps, while the WaveShaper and a dispersive device perform PM to amplitude modulation (AM) conversion. The WaveShaper can also induce both spectral shaping effect for the taps and a different phase for radio-frequency signal during the PM-to-AM conversion. Principle analysis of MPF based on PM-to-AM conversion is discussed. Simulation is carried out to investigate the influence of WaveShaper parameters on the frequency response of the MPF. Through adjustment of the WaveShaper, MPFs with positive, negative, or complex coefficients are also obtained in the experiment. Experimental observations agree well with the simulation results and discussions are given.
We present a high-sensitivity hydrostatic pressure sensor based on a dual-polarization fiber grating laser. To enhance the
sensitivity, the laser is embedded in a composite structure to effectively convert the pressure into intra-cavity
birefringence. The measurement is carried out by monitoring the beat frequency between the two orthogonal polarization
laser modes. The pressure sensitivity reaches 0.17 GHz/MPa within the range 0 to 10 MPa, about one hundred times
higher than the bare laser, and the minimal detectable pressure change is as small as 10 kPa.
Orientation-recognized two-dimensional vibration sensor based on a polarization-controlled cladding-to-core recoupling is demonstrated experimentally. A compact structure in which a short section of multi-mode fiber stub containing a weakly tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) is spliced to another single-mode fiber without any lateral offset. Several well defined lower-order cladding resonances in reflection show different polarization dependence due to the tilted grating vector excitation. Both orientation and amplitude of the vibration can be determined unambiguously via dual-path power detection of the orthogonal-polarimetric odd-cladding-modes. Meanwhile, the unwanted power fluctuations and temperature perturbations can be definitely removed via core mode monitoring.
In this paper, we demonstrate the implementation of a 1×10 array of heterodyning fiber grating laser sensors, pumped by
a single 980 nm laser diode. The sensors are wavelength-multiplexed by inscribing fiber gratings with different periods
and frequency-multiplexed in the RF domain with the assistance of CO2-laser treatment. Through the side irradiation
from the CO2 laser, the intra-cavity birefringence can be significantly changed and the output frequency of the individual
lasers can be continuously adjusted. The frequency range that can be achieved is as much as 1.5 GHz. As a result, the
multiplexing capability of this kind of sensor is greatly improved.
In this paper, temperature compensated microfiber Bragg grating (mFBG) is realized by use of a liquid with a negative
thermo-optic coefficient. The effects of grating elongation and the index change of silica glass are compensated by the
liquid through evanescent-field interaction. As a result, the reflective wavelength shifts by only 30 pm when the
temperature varies from 15 to 60°C. The proposed method is promising due to the compactness and high flexibility of
the device.
A fiber-optic sensor based on a dual polarization fiber grating laser for simultaneous measurement of temperature,
hydrostatic pressure and acoustic signal is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The acoustic wave induces a
frequency modulation (FM) of the carrier in radio frequency (RF) range generated by the fiber laser and can be easily
extracted by using the FM demodulation technique. The temperature can be determined by the laser wavelength. The
hydrostatic pressure can be determined by monitoring the static shift of the carrier frequency and deducting the effect of
the temperature.
We experimentally demonstrate a novel fiber-optic pressure and temperature sensor using dual-FBG written in grapefruit
microstructured fiber (GMF) and standard single-mode fiber (SMF). The pressure sensitivity of FBG in GMF is much
larger than that of SMF because the large air holes in the cross section of GMF make it experience larger axial strain than
SMF in the presence of hydrostatic pressure. While the temperature responses of the two FBGs are almost the same due
to the similar material composition in the fiber cores. Hence, pressure and temperature can be simultaneously
determined.
We demonstrated a method to trim the beat frequency of dual-polarization fiber grating lasers by exposing the laser
cavity to uniform UV beam. The UV-side-illumination induces an additional birefringence of the cavity fiber and
therefore permanently changes the beat frequency of the laser. The beat frequency can be trimmed to longer or shorter
frequency range in a large frequency range. A 6-channel RF-frequency division multiplexed polarimetric fiber grating
laser sensor array was demonstrated.
In this paper we report on polarimetric distributed Bragg reflector fiber laser sensor for hydrostatic pressure. Three
different types of active fibers were used to fabricate dual-polarization distributed-Bragg-reflector fiber lasers and their
responses to hydrostatic pressure were characterized. Three fibers shown different beat frequency response to hydrostatic
pressure and a maximum pressure sensitivity of 2.28 MHz/Mpa was obtained. By detecting the double frequency signal,
the sensitivity can be further increased to 4.56 MHz/MPa. We also tested the long term stability of the sensor at 300oC.
A compact low-beat-frequency dual-polarization distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) fiber laser for high-frequency
ultrasound detection has been demonstrated. The laser was fabricated in high germanium concentration, small-core
erbium-doped fiber with very small birefringence. Induced birefringence to the fiber during the UV inscription process is
small (~10-7) because of the small fiber core (4.2-μm) and consequently the laser beats at a low frequency of ~20 MHz,
making frequency down-conversion unnecessary. The beat frequency can be adjusted by controlling the side-exposure
time of the UV light irradiating the gain cavity, providing a simple approach to multiplex a large number of DBR fiber
lasers of different frequencies in series using frequency division multiplexing (FDM) technique.
We propose a side-hole polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PM-PCF) with ultrahigh polarimetric sensitivity
to hydrostatic pressure. Modal birefringence B as large as 2.34×10-3 and polarimetric pressure sensitivity dB/dp as high
as -2.28×10-5 MPa-1 were achieved at 1.55 μm for the proposed fiber. Combining the advantages of both side-hole fibers
and PM-PCFs, the proposed fiber is an ideal candidate for future applications of pressure sensing.
We present a highly sensitive salinity sensor realized with a polyimide-coated polarization-maintaining photonic crystal
fiber (PM-PCF) based on a Sagnac interferometer configuration. The achieved salinity sensitivity is as high as 0.616
nm/M which is 37 times more sensitive than that of previous reported polyimide-coated fiber grating sensor. It has a low
temperature sensitivity of -0.0122 pm/°. The performance of the sensor in aqueous solution of NaCl with concentrations
up to 5.12 mol/L has been experimentally investigated. The proposed fiber optic salinity sensor is a promising candidate
for salinity measurement.
Fiber grating laser sensors have been attracting interest because of their high signal-to-noise ratio and narrow linewidth
that permit high resolution sensing. According to the working principle, fiber grating laser sensors can be classified into
two types: wavelength encoding sensor and polarimetric heterodyning sensor. The former converts measurrand into shift
in the operation wavelength of the fiber laser, which is similar to that of fiber grating sensor. The latter converts
measurrant into change in beat frequency between the two orthogonal polarization modes from the laser. Because the
beat frequency is in radio frequency (RF) range, the polarimetric heterodyning sensor has distinctive advantages of ease
of interrogation and avoidance of expensive wavelength measurement that is required for wavelength encoding sensors.
In this paper, we report some of our recent works in fabrication of dual-polarization fiber grating lasers, development of
polarimetric heterodyning fiber grating laser sensors for measurement of acoustic wave, acceleration, lateral force,
displacement, electric current and hydrostatic pressure, and sensor multiplexing in RF domain.
The way to improve the reflectivity of chemical composition grating (CCG) sensors is studied. Experimental results
show that improving the initial fiber Bragg grating (FBG) reflectivity strength and enhancing the hydrogen concentration
in the initial FBG inscription help to increase the reflectivity of the CCG sensors at high temperatures.
A novel fiber optic accelerometer based on the integration of dual polarization fiber grating laser with cantilever-mass
element is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The applied acceleration is converted into a change in the beat
frequency between the two polarization modes from the fiber laser. This new type of accelerometer has advantages of
high sensitivity, absolute frequency encoding, capability to multiplex a number of sensors on a single fiber, and
capability of separately tailoring the response sensitivity and natural frequency.
A room-temperature multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) based on a nonlinear high-birefringence fiber loop mirror (HiBi-FLM) is proposed and demonstrated. The nonlinear HiBi-FLM can induce not only wavelength-dependent loss (WDL) but also intensity-dependent loss (IDL). WDL and IDL can effectively suppress the mode competition caused by homogeneous gain broadening of the erbium-doped fiber (EDF), and ensure stable and uniform power distribution over wavelengths. As a result, up to 50-wavelength lasing operations with wavelength spacing of 0.8 nm, and more than 100-wavelength operations with wavelength spacing of 0.14 nm are achieved. The power distribution over the wavelengths is uniform, and the power fluctuation in each wavelength is smaller than 0.2 dB.
We present an ultra-short distributed Bragg reflector fiber laser photowritten in Er/Yb co-doped fiber. The total length of
the fiber laser is only 8.4 mm. The lasing threshold is less than 1 mW. The optical signal-to-noise ratio of the laser output
is around 70 dB. The laser emits two orthogonal polarization modes. The electrical signal-to-noise ratio of the beat signal
generated by the fiber laser is better than 70 dB.
A novel fiber optic current sensor based on magnet force is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. A permanent
magnet exerts transversal force to a dual polarization fiber grating laser due to the action of the magnet field of electric
current. The transversal force modulates the fiber birefringence and therefore the polarization mode beat frequency of the
fiber grating laser. The beat frequency changes linearly in response to the electric current.
We experimentally demonstrate a high pressure sensor based on a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PMPCF)
with Sagnac loop configuration for downhole application. The pressure sensitivity of the proposed sensor is 4.21
nm/MPa and 3.27 nm/MPa at ~1320 nm and ~1550 nm respectively. High pressure measurement up to 20 MPa has been
achieved in our experiment. The sensor also shows reduced temperature sensitivity, making it an ideal candidate for
pressure sensing in harsh environment.
A high sensitivity displacement sensor based on a dual-polarization fiber grating laser incorporated with a cantilever
beam is demonstrated. The cantilever beam transforms the displacement into a transverse force to the fiber grating laser
which changes the fiber birefringence and therefore the polarization mode beat frequency of the laser. A sensitivity of
0.535 GHz/mm is implemented.
We present a high-temperature-resistant distributed Bragg reflector fiber laser photowritten in Er/Yb codoped
phosphosilicate fiber that is capable of long-term operation at 500 °C. Highly saturated Bragg gratings are
directly inscribed into the Er/Yb fiber without hydrogen loading by using 193 nm excimer laser. After
subjected to a significant decay at elevated temperature, the stabilized gratings are strong enough for laser
oscillation. The laser operates in robust single longitude mode with output power more than 1 dBm and
signal-to-noise ratio better than 70 dB over the entire temperature range from room temperature to 500 °C.
We present a high-temperature-resistant distributed Bragg reflector fiber laser photowritten in Er/Yb codoped fiber that
is capable of long-term operating at 500°C. Highly saturated Bragg gratings are directly inscribed into the active fiber by
use of the two-photon absorption at 193 nm. After annealing at elevated temperature, the stabilized gratings are strong
enough for laser oscillation. The laser operates in robust single mode with output power more than 1 dBm and signal-tonoise
ratio better than 70 dB over the entire temperature range from room temperature to 500°C.
Chemical composition gratings, used as strain sensing elements at high temperature environments, show a temperature
dependence of their strain response. Temperature dependence of the strain response of CCGs over a range of
temperatures from 24°C to 900°C has been measured. It is found that the wavelength shift of CCGs is linear with applied
tensile strain at a constant temperature, and the strain sensitivity is 0.0011nm/με.
We report on the pressure characterization of Bragg gratings in grapefruit microstructured fibers. The air holes enhance
the pressure response. The effect of air expansion in the holes on temperature response was also investigated.
Historically, due to the high cost of optical devices, fiber-optics sensor systems were only employed in niche areas where conventional electrical sensors are not suitable. This scenario changed dramatically in the last few years following the explosion of the Internet which caused the rapid expansion of the optical fiber telecommunication industry and substantially driven down the cost of optical components. In recent years, fiber-optic sensors and particularly fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors have attracted a lot of interests and are being used in numerous applications. We have conducted several field trials of FBG sensors for railway applications and structural monitoring. About 30 FBG sensors were installed on the rail tracks of Kowloon-Canton Railway Corp. for train identification and speed measurements and the results obtained show that FBG sensors exhibit very good performance and could play a major role in the realization of "Smart Railway". FBG sensors were also installed on Hong Kong's landmark TsingMa Bridge, which is the world longest suspension bridge (2.2 km) that carries both trains and regular road traffic. The trials were carried out with a high-speed (up to 20 kHz) interrogation system based on CCD and also with a interrogation unit that based on scanning optical filter (up to 70 Hz). Forty FBGs sensors were divided into 3 arrays and installed on different parts of the bridge (suspension cable, rocker bearing and truss girders). The objectives of the field trial on the TsingMa Bridge are to monitor the strain of different parts of the bridge under railway load and highway load, and to compare the FBG sensors' performance with conventional resistive strain gauges already installed on the bridge. The measured results show that excellent agreement was obtained between the 2 types of sensors.
Recent developments of Bismuth-based erbium-doped fibers (Bi-EDFs) have demonstrated their potential applications for broadband amplifiers, particularly for the L-band in DWDM systems, for short pulse amplifiers to be used in very high bit-rate transmission systems (up to 160 Gbps), and for ultra wideband tunable fiber ring lasers. The low concentration quenching of erbium ions in Bi-based glass permits efficient high erbium concentration Bi-EDFs (up to 26,000 ppm) to be fabricated allowing the realization of ultra-short length erbium-doped fibre amplifiers and fiber lasers. In this paper, we reported the performance of two Bi-EDFs with different erbium ions concentrations for signal amplification. One fiber was doped with 6,470 wt-ppm of erbium ions and the other was doped with 3,250 wt-ppm of erbium ions. The performance of a 253-cm long Lanthanum co-doped Bi-based EDF (3,250 ppm of erbium) for the amplification of 142 wavelength channels was evaluated. 140 of the input signals were located at the 50-GHz ITU grid. Signal gains of over 20 dB and NF less than 6.7 dB were measured for all the channels with wavelengths ranging from 1554.13 nm to 1612.22 nm (i.e. over 58 nm). 3-dB bandwidth of 53.9 nm and quantum conversion efficiency of about 60 % were attained when the fiber was pumped with 350 mW and 623 mW of pump power, respectively. The performance of an ultra-short length Bi-EDFA, using 23-cm of Bi-EDF doped with 6,500 ppm of erbium ions pumped at 980 nm, for the amplification of picosecond pulses will be discussed. The results of an ultra wideband (106 nm) tunable fiber ring laser based on the higher erbium concentration Bi-EDF will also be presented.
We demonstrate a fiber grating laser hydrophone that can measures ultrasound and temperature simultaneously. It can detect ultrasound with frequency up to 40 MHz and has advantage of ease of demodulation.
We demonstrate a wavelength- and bandwidth-tunable reflective filter based on a novel fiber Bragg grating chirping technique. The new technique allows grating to be chirped in a wide range without center Bragg wavelength shift. The tunabilities of the new band reflective filter are based on the responses of the grating pitch to the temperature and the applied strain gradient. It enables wavelength and bandwidth tuning ranges up to 5.2 nm and 10.9 nm, respectively.
A postfabrication technique for writing fiber Bragg gratings in H2-loaded fiber with precise wavelength control is reported. The grating wavelength is highly stable and less than 0.01 nm shift was observed after storing at room temperature for 2 months. This technique allows 1 nm of wavelength trimming and significantly enhances the grating thermal stability.
In this paper, the effects of compression induced birefringence on reflection spectra of fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) is investigated experimentally together with the theoretical analysis. The coupled mode theory has been employed, by considering the LPx and LPy modes, to obtain accurate results for optical responses of FBG with compression-induced birefringence. The effects of polarization states of the incident light and compression conditions have also been investigated. Good agreements between experimental results and numerical simulations have been obtained.
A curvature sensor based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is demonstrated in this paper. Two FBGs are surface-bonded on opposite sides of a flexible beam to track the local curvature variation. The bending-induced strain causes opposite changes in their Bragg wavelengths. As a result, temperature-independent curvature measurement with sensitivity of 3.21nm/mMIN1 is achieved by monitoring spacing between the two Bragg wavelengths. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical analysis.
An active wavelength demodulation approach with high- resolution for fiber Bragg grating sensor is proposed and demonstrated for multiplexed temperature measurement in this paper. A tunable fiber laser controlled by computer is used as the scanning light source. And the computer synchronously performs data gathering and processing. Here Gaussian-Newton curve fitting approach is used to determine the Bragg wavelength of the grating sensors. A resolution approximately +/- 0.1 pm, corresponding to approximately +/- 0.01 degree(s)C has been demonstrated using this approach.
This paper reports and provides an explanation for the growth behavior of long-period gratings in H2-loaded fiber immediately after 193nm UV inscription. Growth of grating resonance peak by as much as 14 dB was measured. Impact of temperature and grating strength, immediately after UV inscription, on the growth behavior are also discussed.
The thermal stability of fibre Bragg gratings written in hydrogen-loaded standard telecommunication fibres can be significantly enhanced by pre-irradiating the fibre with UV beam before writing gratings. Our experimental result shows that these gratings maintained more than 60% of their initial index modulation after 10 hours at 605°C.
We demonstrate the high temperature sensitivity of the polymer-packaged fiber grating. By packaging fiber grating with a special type of polymer, twenty-three times enhanced thermal sensitivity and 41.32nm tuning range have been abstained.
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