Optical Sensing of Electric Fields in Harsh Environments

Abstract

Fiber optic electric field sensors are ideal for characterizing the electric field in many different systems. Unfortunately, many of these systems produce one or more noise types, like vibrational noise which contribute to a harsh sensing environment on the fiber optic sensor. When fiber optic sensors are placed in a harsh vibration environment, multiple noise types can overwhelm the measurements. This work shows how to simultaneously eliminate three different noise types in a fiber optic sensor induced by a harsh vibration environment. Specifically, nonlocalized vibration-induced interferometric noise is up converted to higher frequency bands by single-tone phase modulation. Then, localized vibrational noise, and radio frequency noise are all eliminated using a push–pull slab coupled optical sensor configuration to allow for an optical measurement of an electric field in a harsh environment.