Customized-accuracy simultaneous sensing of temperature, pressure and acoustic impedance based on FBS in optical fiber

Abstract

In this work, it is proposed a novel customized-accuracy simultaneous sensing of temperature, pressure and acoustic impedance based on forward Brillouin scattering (FBS) in optical fiber. By observing the variations in frequency shift-temperature, frequency shift-pressure and frequency shift-acoustic impedance for different radial acoustic modes in certain types of fibers, we propose a novel method for simultaneously measuring three parameters (temperature, pressure and acoustic impedance) using the changes of frequency shift of three FBS scattering peaks. It is very interesting that we can utilize numerous sensitivity combinations of three measured parameters corresponding to different frequency shifts in optical fibers, allowing for the selection of different combinations of measurement accuracy for temperature, pressure and acoustic impedance sensing, and thus meeting the different requirements for measurement accuracy in specific measurement applications. In a proof-of-concept experiment, a 1060-XP fiber is used as the sensing fiber. By choosing suitable sensitivity combinations of coefficients of frequency shift-temperature, frequency shift-pressure and frequency shift-acoustic impedance of the fiber, we achieve high-accuracy simultaneous measurement of temperature, pressure and acoustic impedance with low measurement uncertainties of 0.13 °C, 0.04 MPa and 0.006 MRayl, respectively. The proposed method not only realize temperature, pressure and acoustic impedance simultaneous sensing for the first time, but also open up a new way of fiber optic sensing with customized multi-parameter sensing accuracy.