Optical sensing device containing fiber Bragg gratings
A new optical sensing device containing fiber Bragg gratings, a scanning bandpass filter, an interferometer and multiple photodetectors is disclosed. The present invention also describes a new system and method for fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensor interrogation and multiplexing. The new system combines a scanning Fabry-Perot (SFP) bandpass filter used to wavelength-multiplex multiple gratings in a single fiber, and an unbalanced Mach-Zehnder fibre interferometer made with a 3&times;3 coupler to detect strain-induced wavelength shifts. A passive technique for interferometer drift compensation using non-sensing FBGs is included in the system. A complete prototype system interrogates four gratings in a single fiber at a Nyquist sampling rate up to 10 kHz, with a noise floor measured near 4 n&egr; Hz&#8722;1/2 above 0.1 Hz. The inclusion of the interferometer drift compensation technique is shown to make quasi-static measurements feasible.
The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy
G G G G
G01K G01L G01L G01D
inventional inventional inventional inventional
Chia-Chen Gregg A. Michael D. Bryan L.
Chang Johnson Todd Althouse