Recording of pulsed currents by a fibre-optic Faraday effect-based sensor with limited frequency band

Abstract

We have studied, experimentally and theoretically, the dependence of the amplitude and noise response parameters of a fibre-optic Faraday effect-based current sensor on the photodetector frequency band in recording rectangular current pulses, the duration of which does not exceed the time of light propagation through the sensing fibre. The presence of an optimal band at which the signal-to-noise ratio has a pronounced maximum is demonstrated. It is shown that the optimal bandwidth is close in magnitude to the inverse time of light passage through the fibre. The revealed feature is explained by the difference in dependences of the response amplitude and the white noise level of optical radiation on the frequency band of the photodetector. A technique for amplitude error correction at the optimal band is proposed.