A real time digital vibration acceleration fiber sensing system based on a multi-carrier modulation/demodulation technique

Abstract

A multi-longitudinal mode fiber laser sensor (MLMFLS) system based on digital modulation/demodulation technique for vibration acceleration detection is proposed. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first digital vibration acceleration demodulation system ever reported by a MLMFLS system. A few beat frequency signals (BFS) generated by the MLMFLS are used as signal carriers of applied vibration signals. Based on multi-channel digital down-conversion technique, the weak vibration signals modulated on the BFS are superposed by utilizing the digital universal software radio peripheral (USRP). The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the output vibration signal is greatly enhanced. A spectral subtraction method is also utilized to improve the SNR of the demodulated vibration signal. The acceleration of the vibration signal is obtained after second order differential of the time domain vibration signal. By simply changing the position of window function of short-time Fourier transform, a real-time vibration frequency and acceleration sensing system is achieved. The measurement results demonstrated a minimum detectable acceleration of 0.03 g at vibration frequency of 1.0 Hz by the designed sensing system. It also has a simple structure, high signal-to-noise ratio and stability.