Low-cost interrogator for fiber-optic interferometers and fiber Bragg grating sensors

Abstract

We report a low-cost interrogator for fiber-optic interferometric and Bragg grating sensors. The interrogator is based on a compact optical path scanner which is made by splicing a hollow fiber to a single mode fiber and by sealing a segment of air and a segment of thermally expanded liquid inside the hollow fiber. The facets between the fiber-air interface and the air-liquid interface reflect the light from the single mode fiber back, and the optical path difference between the two facets can be controlled by changing the temperature of the liquid. When the compact optical path scanner is place inside a white light interferometer together with a sensing fiber-optic Fabry-Perot interferometer, the optical path difference of the sensing interferometer can be decoded as the optical path difference of the scanner when the interference signal gets maximum. The decoding accuracy of such an interferometer interrogation system was measured to be 14 nm over a range of 40 μm. The compact optical path scanner can also be used to form a wavelength meter, which can be applied to decode the Bragg wavelength of a fiber Bragg grating sensor. A decoding accuracy of 3.5 pm was obtained.