Research progress in the key device and technology for fiber optic sensor network

Abstract

The recent research progress in the key device and technology of the fiber optic sensor network (FOSN) is introduced in this paper. An architecture of the sensor optical passive network (SPON), by employing hybrid wavelength division multiplexing/time division multiplexing (WDM/TDM) techniques similar to the fiber communication passive optical network (PON), is proposed. The network topology scheme of a hybrid TDM/WDM/FDM (frequency division multiplexing) three-dimension fiber optic sensing system for achieving ultra-large capacity, long distance, and high resolution sensing performance is performed and analyzed. As the most important device of the FOSN, several kinds of light source are developed, including the wideband multi-wavelength fiber laser operating at C band, switchable and tunable 2 μm multi-wavelength fiber lasers, ultra-fast mode-locked fiber laser, as well as the optical wideband chaos source, which have very good application prospects in the FOSN. Meanwhile, intelligent management techniques for the FOSN including wideband spectrum demodulation of the sensing signals and real-time fault monitoring of fiber links are presented. Moreover, several typical applications of the FOSN are also discussed, such as the fiber optic gas sensing network, fiber optic acoustic sensing network, and strain/dynamic strain sensing network.