Interference Spectrum Research Articles

Large-scale cascading of first-order FBG array in a highly multimode coreless fiber using femtosecond laser for distributed thermal sensing.

This research focuses on the performance analysis and characterization of a fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) array, consisting of 10 first-order FBGs inscribed by a femtosecond (FS) laser in a highly multimode coreless fiber. The study evaluates the FBG array's ability to function as a distributed thermal sensing (DTS) platform, with the coreless fiber chosen as the sensing element due to its immunity to dopant migration at high temperatures. The design of a large cascaded first-order FBG array effectively eliminates unwanted harmonic peaks across a wide spectrum range. In contrast, higher-order FBGs introduce limitations due to the overlapping of Bragg peaks with harmonics. The FBG array's performance is evaluated by measuring the reflection spectrum of each grating at different temperatures, showing a high temperature sensitivity of 15.05 pm/°C at a Bragg wavelength of 1606.3 nm, with a linear response in the temperature range of 24 - 1100 °C. The FBG array was designed for a spatial resolution of 5 mm. A mode scrambler in the sensing network is employed, which suppresses multimodal interference, characterizes FBG peak visibility, and stabilizes the interference spectrum. The stability of the FBG array is also assessed over 24 hrs at 1100 °C, and it is observed to be stable during thermal treatment. Heat treatment at 1100°C improves the signal to noise ratio of the FBG array, demonstrating the robustness and suitability of the proposed FBG array on highly multimode coreless fiber as a potential sensing platform for DTS applications in harsh environmental conditions, overcoming the issues of dopant migration presented by dopes silica optical fibers at high temperatures.

Highly sensitive fiber optic sensor based on chitosan/α-Fe2O3 for trace copper(II) ion detection

Instrument methods are essential for simple and rapid detection of copper(II) (Cu2+) in drinking water and healthcare. However, these methods suffer from complex sample pretreatment and long detection time. This paper proposed a highly sensitive fiber optic sensor for trace Cu2+ detection in aqueous solutions. Based on the principle of modal interference, by surface functionalization, a uniform chitosan (CS)/α-Fe2O3 nanocomposite material was coated on a structure of no-core fiber–multimode fiber–no-core fiber (NCF1-MMF-NCF2). The amino and hydroxyl groups in the material have a specific recognition function for Cu2+, which can chelate with Cu2+ and change the refractive index of the material, leading to the shift of interference spectrum. Trace Cu2+ detection can be achieved by monitoring the displacement of the interference spectrum. The results revealed that within the range of 0–1 μM Cu2+ concentrations, with increasing Cu2+ concentration, the interference spectrum underwent a red shift and the maximum detection sensitivity of Cu2+ ions reached 456.69 nm/μM, with a good linearity of 0.989. Also, the sensor has the advantages of high stability, good repeatability, simple fabrication, and low cost.

Ultra-high sensitivity microwave-photonic sapphire fiber Fabry-Perot interferometry based on the Vernier effect.

The wavelength of microwave is longer than that of lightwave, causing the interferometric optical path difference induced by the measurand changes to be relatively smaller than that of microwave, which results in the lower sensitivity of sapphire fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) sensor in microwave band. To improve sensitivity, a parallel FPI sensing system is constructed, in which a section of sapphire fiber connected to a single-mode transmission fiber is used as a sensing FPI, and a single-mode fiber (SMF) with a slightly different optical path from a sensing FPI is utilized as a reference FPI. By connecting two FPIs in parallel, Vernier effect is formed to improve sensitivity. The influence of relationship between the optical path difference of the reference FPI and the sensing FPI on the sensitivity amplification factor is analyzed based on the microwave interference spectrum of the parallel FPI. A section of sapphire fiber with the length of 8 cm is used as temperature sensor to construct high-temperature sensing system. The results demonstrate that the temperature sensitivity reaches about 2338.68kHz/°C, which is approximately 130 times higher than that of the sensing FPI alone. Furthermore, when the difference of optical path between the sensing FPI and the reference FPI is kept constant while the sensing FPI is unchanged, the amplification factor of the temperature sensitivity is approximately 2.64 times higher with longer length of the reference FPI compared to the situation with shorter length of the reference FPI.

A hybrid interferometer sensor for simultaneous measurement of temperature and gas pressure based on tapered seven-core fiber and PDMS

A novel hybrid interferometer sensor composed of a tapered seven-core fiber (TSCF) and a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cap at the end face of a TSCF is proposed for simultaneous measurement of temperature and gas pressure. TSCF forms a Michelson interferometer (MI), and the PDMS cap on the end surface of TSCF forms a Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI). The sensing head consisted of a cascade of MI and FPI. When the external temperature or gas pressure changes, owing to the thermal effect or elastic deformation of PDMS, the interference spectrum of the FPI shifts significantly, so the FPI is very sensitive to temperature and gas pressure. MI, which is made of quartz optical fiber, is sensitive only to temperature and is not to gas pressure. The experimental results show that FPI has a temperature sensitivity of −0.22 nm °C−1 in the temperature range of 40 °C–80 °C, and a gas pressure sensitivity of −2.27 nm MPa−1 in the gas pressure range of 0–0.3 MPa. MI has a temperature sensitivity of 0.05 nm °C−1 in the temperature range of 40 °C–80 °C, and a gas pressure sensitivity of zero in the gas pressure range of 0–0.3 MPa. Using the temperature and gas pressure sensitivities of FPI and MI to construct a measurement matrix, it is possible to simultaneously measure temperature and gas pressure, eliminating their cross-sensitivity. This sensor has the comprehensive advantages of compact structure, small size, easy manufacturing, low cost, high reliability, and high sensitivity, and is expected to be applied in industrial practice.

All-fiber temperature and humidity sensor based on photopolymer and polydimethylsiloxane with low-crosstalk and high-sensitivity

The ability to monitor temperature and humidity simultaneously is critical for biomedical and industrial production. We demonstrate a novel temperature and humidity optical fiber sensor based on a photopolymer and polydimethylsiloxane for dealing with temperature cross-sensitivity problem. The low-frequency signal and the high-frequency signal in the interference spectrum were obtained by filtering. Due to structural and material properties, the low-frequency signal is only temperature dependent, while the high-frequency signal is affected by temperature and humidity. Temperature and humidity signals rely on different interferometric mechanisms for measurement to achieve negligible crosstalk. The sensor exhibits a high temperature sensitivity of 1.88 nm/°C by measuring the shift of an interference dip wavelength in the low-frequency signal. The humidity sensitivity is up to 0.282 nm/%RH due to the excellent water absorption capacity of the photopolymer. High accuracy, good repeatability, and stability enable the sensor to measure ambient temperature and humidity. We believe the sensor has excellent potential in environmental monitoring, biomedicine, and human–machine interface.

Simultaneous measurement three parameters of temperature, strain, and curvature by thin-core fiber based-Mach-Zehnder interferometer

A Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensor for simultaneous measurement of three parameters is developed. The sensor structure is spliced by single-mode fiber, no-core fiber, thin-core fiber (TCF) and single-mode fiber in turn, where the sensing element is TCF. Due to the different core diameters of three types of optical fibers, the light in the transmission process excites a number of higher-order modes and interacts to form a mode interferometer. The interference spectrum produces many resonance peaks that are sensitive to different parameters. We select three resonant peaks sensitive to temperature, strain and bending for measuring temperature, strain and curvature. The experimental results display that the resonant wavelength of the sensor transmission spectrum drifts linearly as a function of the environmental parameters, with a maximum sensitivity of 248.7 pm/℃ for temperature, −2 pm/με for strain and −24.784 nm/m−1 for curvature. Selecting three resonance peaks to construct a measurement matrix realizes three-parameters simultaneous measurement and eliminates the cross-sensitivity among the three physical quantities. In addition, the proposed sensor possesses appealing characteristics of facile manufacturing process, compact size, high sensitivity, good linear fitting, robustness and low cost, and the sensor has a broad application prospect in the field of multi-parameter simultaneous measurement. In short, only one MZI in the optical fiber can realize the simultaneous monitoring of temperature, strain and bending, which provides a new solution for creating a compact multi-parameter sensor for structural health monitoring.

Directional Bending Sensor and Multiparameter Sensor Based on D-Core Multimode Fiber

For the sensor with interference between fiber core mode and cladding mode, the directional bending sensor can be realized by processing asymmetric structure on the cladding or using eccentric fiber, but the temperature and strain crosstalk of the sensor with interference between fiber core mode and cladding mode is large. In this article, a kind of fiber intermode interference sensor with asymmetric structure is proposed, which can realize vector bending sensing and reduce temperature and strain crosstalk. The designed D-core multimode fiber has cladding and air on both sides of the fiber core. When 0° and 180° bending are applied to it, the interference spectrum moves in different directions, thus realizing the recognition of bending direction. For curvature detection, in the curvature range of 0–0.62 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{m}^{-{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , the sensitivity of 0° bending is 11.00 nm/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{m}^{-{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , and that of 180° bending is −11.40 nm/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{m}^{-{1}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . For liquid level detection, the sensing sensitivity is 234 pm/mm with the range of 0–4 cm, and the linearity is 0.993. In addition, the temperature sensitivity is as low as 10 pm/°C, and the strain sensitivity is as low as −1.28 pm/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \varepsilon $ </tex-math></inline-formula> . The proposed sensor realized the directional bending sensing and liquid level sensing of intermodal interference. Its low sensitivity to temperature and strain can be used to avoid the cross-sensitivity problems. In the field of water flow detection, the simultaneous detection of water level and water flow direction can be realized by the proposed sensor.

All-optical nonvolatile optical modulator for in-fiber operation

Abstract The control of information is a defining feature of the information age, and the optical modulator likewise has a crucial role in optical networks. The transmission, processing, and storage of data have demanded low energy consumption and high speed for photonic systems, promoting the development of electro-optic modulators to all-optical modulators. Although these all-optical modulation methods eliminate the photoelectric conversion, the disadvantage of volatile materials requiring continuous power supply when processing and retaining data in new materials-based devices increase energy consumption. We propose a Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) integrated all-optical, nonvolatile optical modulator for in-fiber operation. The pulse-induced GST phase transition changes the reflectivity of the fiber end face, and this difference affects the result of the interference, achieving a modulation of output light intensity in interference spectra. The experimental results reveal that the device has obtained 13 dB interference intensity contrast in the telecommunications bands, and its response to a pump pulse is around 100 ns. Furthermore, we demonstrated the operation of the device as a scalar multiplication unit and a logic operation unit. The signal can be transmitted, processed, and stored in the fiber without photoelectric conversion. With the benefits of the switching power consumption of less than 100 nJ and the nonvolatile nature of GST, the device will be more energy-efficient in synchronous processing and storing. This in-fiber operating modulator lays the foundation for developing all-optical devices and networks.

The Calibration Method of Multi-Channel Spatially Varying Amplitude-Phase Inconsistency Errors in Airborne Array TomoSAR

Airborne array tomographic synthetic aperture radar (TomoSAR) can acquire three-dimensional (3D) information of the observed scene in a single pass. In the process of airborne array TomoSAR data imaging, due to the disturbance of factors such as inconsistent antenna patterns and baseline errors, there are spatially varying amplitude-phase inconsistency errors in the multi-channel Single-Look-Complex (SLC) images. The existence of the errors degrades the quality of the 3D imaging results, which suffer from positioning errors, stray points, and spurious targets. In this paper, a new calibration method based on multiple prominent points is proposed to calibrate the errors of amplitude-phase inconsistency. Firstly, the prominent points are selected from the multi-channel SLC data. Then, the subspace decomposition method and maximum interference spectrum method are used to extract the multi-channel amplitude-phase inconsistency information at each point. The last step is to fit the varying curve and to compensate for the errors. The performance of the method is verified using actual data. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional fixed amplitude-phase inconsistency calibration method, the proposed method can effectively calibrate spatially varying amplitude-phase inconsistency errors, thus improving on the accuracy of 3D reconstruction results for large-scale scenes.

A passive optical fibre sensor based on Fabry‐Perot interferometry for bipolar electrostatic monitoring of insulating dielectrics

AbstractThe measurement of the surface charge on the insulating dielectrics is critical to estimate the insulation strength of electrical equipment in operation. Unavoidable interactions with the electromagnetic field, however, generally result in distortion measurement of active sensor. Thus, it is of great significance to investigate a passive sensor for monitoring the deposited charge. Here, a passive optical fibre electrostatic sensor is developed on the principle of Fabry–Perot interference to quantify the surface potential of the insulating dielectrics. The sensitivity of quantifying the electrostatic charge is explored in terms of the wavelength shift in the interference spectrum, and the linear correlation is 0.99. Meanwhile, the sensor can identify a negative quadratic trend with the increase of the surface roughness of the insulating dielectrics. The merits of the proposed sensor such as passive monitoring, bipolar electrostatic detection, and the excellent ability of anti‐electromagnetic interference are highlighted in the results. Hence, this sensor can serve as an effective tool to monitor the electrostatic charge in the fields of smart electrical equipment, fuel transportation, aerospace, integrate circuit etc.

Measuring optical properties of clear and turbid media with broadband spectral interferometry.

The group index, n g, group velocity dispersion (GVD), and scattering attenuation coefficient, μ s, were measured for dilutions of glycerol, ethanol, and Intralipid 20% with water. Experiments were performed with a supercontinuum laser based Mach-Zehnder spectroscopic interferometry setup for wavelengths between 400 and 930nm. All optical properties could be retrieved from a single calibrated measurement of the interference spectrum. Scattering attenuation was determined from the envelope of the interference. The group index and GVD were retrieved from the unwrapped spectral phase. It was found that the group indices of glycerol and ethanol dilutions are in accordance with the Lorentz-Lorenz mixing formula. The scattering attenuation matches well to a semi-empirical model based on the Twerksy effective packing fraction.

Highly sensitive cholesterol concentration trace detection based on a microfiber optic-biosensor enhanced specificity with beta-cyclodextrin film

A beta-cyclodextrin (β-CD) based optic-fiber microfiber biosensor for the detection of cholesterol concentration is propose and experimentally demonstrated. As an identifying substance, β-CD is immobilized on the fiber surface for cholesterol reaction to form an inclusion complex. When the surface refractive index (RI) change is cause because of capturing the complex cholesterol (CHOL), the proposed sensor translates RI change into a macroscopic wavelength drift in the interference spectrum. The microfiber interferometer has a high RI sensitivity of 1251 nm/RIU and a low-temperature sensitivity of −0.019 nm/°C. This sensor can rapidly detect cholesterol in the concentration range of 0.001 to 1 mM and has a sensitivity of 12.7 nm/(mM) in the low concentration range of 0.001 to 0.05 mM. Finally, the characterization by infrared spectroscopy shows that the sensor can indeed detect cholesterol. This biosensor has a few strong advantages of high sensitivity and good selectivity, which expects great potential in biomedical applications.

All-fiber modulator derived from the large-transverse-offset Mach-Zehnder interferometer coated with ITO

In this paper, we first propose a fiber electrothermal modulator derived from the large-transverse-offset Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) coated with transparent and conductive indium-tin-oxide (ITO). The fiber MZI was fabricated by welding single-mode fiber (SMF) with large-transverse-offset fusion. The fiber modulator is that the thermo-optic effect of the ITO film on the surface of the fiber leads to a change in the refractive index, which in turn causes the shift of the interference spectrum. Specifically, it is based on the thermo-optic effect of a large-transverse-offset MZI coated with ITO. Through the external electric potential, the ITO film generates Joule heat and then changes the effective refractive index of the cladding to realize fiber phase modulation. In the experiment, the spectrum is significantly shifted by 5.55 nm at the wavelength of 1650 nm and can obtain an optical modulator with a rise (fall) time of 0.65 (0.5) s. The proposed fiber modulator shows great performance in the optical switches and sensing.

An Unsupervised Learning Paradigm for User Scheduling in Large Scale Multi-Antenna Systems

The tremendous growth of mobile networking and Internet of Things (IoT) demands efficient and reliable service for massive wireless systems. Multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) technologies successfully utilize spatial diversity to substantially improve spectral efficiency by scheduling multiple devices for simultaneous spectrum access. Efficient solutions to the NP-hard problem of scheduling large number of users are vital to interference mitigation and spectrum efficiency. Despite successes of machine learning in tackling large-scale optimization problems, direct adoption of supervised learning in MIMO user scheduling is difficult as there is no optimum solution to use as labeled training data, and unsupervised learning would identify similar user channel features instead of promoting channel diversity. In this work, we propose an effective and scalable user scheduling paradigm based on unsupervised learning to enhance spatial diversity in both uplink and downlink. Given users’ channel state information (CSI), we first cluster CSIs over the Grassmannian manifold to identify users with high CSI similarity, before scheduling them into MIMO access groups with low co-channel interference. Our paradigm is generalizable to a variety of different simple and scalable unsupervised learning tools and different diversity optimization criteria. Numerical tests demonstrate substantial gain in terms of spectrum efficiency and interference suppression at modest computation complexity.

Improved game algorithm for spectrum resource optimization with variable number of channels

In order to reduce the interference of wireless sensor network, improve the utilization of spectrum resources and reduce the cost of spectrum, this paper uses game theory to improve the optimal response strategy. Under the premise of variable number of available channels, an improved channel allocation game algorithm (named CGVAC) is designed considering the impact of link transmission, network interference and residual energy on network performance. Theoretical analysis shows that the algorithm exists and can converge to the stable solution of Nash Equilibrium, and MATLAB was used for simulation. The experimental results show that the algorithm has less communication interference and higher spectrum utilization.

Compact Harmonic Vernier Sensor Based on an In-Fiber FPI with Three Reflector System for Simultaneous Gas Pressure and Temperature Measurement.

In this work, we proposed a sensitivity-enhanced temperature sensor, a compact harmonic Vernier sensor based on an in-fiber Fabry-Perot Interferometer (FPI), with three reflective interfaces for the measurement of gas temperature and pressure. FPI consists of air and silica cavities formulated by single-mode optical fiber (SMF) and several short hollow core fiber segments. One of the cavity lengths is deliberately made larger to excite several harmonics of the Vernier effect that have different sensitivity magnifications to the gas pressure and temperature. The spectral curve could be demodulated using a digital bandpass filter to extract the interference spectrum according to the spatial frequencies of resonance cavities. The findings indicate that the material and structural properties of the resonance cavities have an impact on the respective temperature sensitivity and pressure sensitivity. The measured pressure sensitivity and temperature sensitivity of the proposed sensor are 114 nm/MPa and 176 pm/°C, respectively. Therefore, the proposed sensor combines ease of fabrication and high sensitivity, making it great potential for practical sensing measurements.

Optical fiber vibration sensor for bearing fault detection based on Sagnac interferometer

Bearings are crucial components in mechanical equipment, and bearing failure is one of the reasons for mechanical equipment safety accidents. In this work, an optical fiber vibration sensor based on Sagnac interferometer (SI) is proposed and applied to bearing fault detection. The polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) is spliced between two single-mode fibers (SMFs) to form a SMF-PMF-SMF (SPS) fiber structure, which is connected with a 3 dB coupler to form a SI based on SPS fiber structure. The mass block is fixed in the middle of the PMF. When the monitored surface or structure vibrates, the stress of PMF will change and the Sagnac interference spectrum will be shifted, so that the vibration can be measured. The fabrication technology of sensor based on 3D printing is studied, and the structural parameters of the sensor are optimized through experiments and theoretical analysis. A vibration detection system and a rolling bearing vibration test platform based on SI and fiber ring laser are built. The experimental results show that the relative error between the experimental and theoretical results of healthy and faulty bearings is less than 1.60%, and the fault detection of bearings is realized. Temperature cross-sensitivity and stability of the sensing system are analyzed. The sensor has the advantages of simple structure, easy fabrication, anti-interference, etc, and has wide application prospects in engineering, machinery, security and other fields.

Dichromatic "Breather Molecules" in a Mode-Locked Fiber Laser.

Bound states of solitons ("molecules") occur in various settings, playing an important role in the operation of fiber lasers, optical emulation, encoding, and communications. Soliton interactions are generally related to breathing dynamics in nonlinear dissipative systems, and maintain potential applications in spectroscopy. In the present work, dichromatic breather molecules (DBMs) are created in a synchronized mode-locked fiber laser. Real-time delay-shifting interference spectra are measured to display the temporal evolution of the DBMs, that cannot be observed by means of the usual real-time spectroscopy. As a result, robust out-of-phase vibrations are found as a typical intrinsic mode of DBMs. The same bound states are produced numerically in the framework of a model combining equations for the population inversion in the mode-locked laser and cross-phase-modulation-coupled complex Ginzburg-Landau equations for amplitudes of the optical fields in the fiber segments of the laser cavity. The results demonstrate that the Q-switching instability induces the onset of breathing oscillations. The findings offer new possibilities for the design of various regimes of the operation of ultrafast lasers.

All fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer for simultaneous measurement of temperature and refractive index

An all fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometric (MZI) sensor for measuring temperature and refractive index (RI) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed sensor is fabricated with a coreless–few mode–coreless fiber structure. Variations in ambient temperature and RI cause changes in phase differences between the fundamental mode and the higher-order modes, leading to shifts in interference spectrum. The two resonance dips shifts within the wavelength spectrum are used to investigate the temperature and RI characteristics of the sensor. Experimental results show that the two dips have different responses to temperature and RI, indicating that the sensor can realize simultaneous measurement of temperature and RI; the maximum sensing sensitivities are 0.0739 nm/°C and −25.29 nm/RIU, respectively. The proposed sensor has potential applications in physical, biological, and chemical sensing owing to its low cost, good linearity, and simple fabrication.

Fiber-integrated cantilever-based nanomechanical biosensors as a tool for rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing.

There is an urgent need for developing rapid and affordable antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) technologies to inhibit the overuse of antibiotics. In this study, a novel microcantilever nanomechanical biosensor based on Fabry-Pérot interference demodulation was developed for AST. To construct the biosensor, a cantilever was integrated with the single mode fiber in order to form the Fabry-Pérot interferometer (FPI). After the attachment of bacteria on the cantilever, the fluctuations of cantilever caused by the bacterial movements were detected by monitoring the changes of resonance wavelength in the interference spectrum. We applied this methodology to Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, showing the amplitude of cantilever's fluctuations was positively related on the quantity of bacteria immobilized on the cantilever and associated with the bacterial metabolism. The response of bacteria to antibiotics was dependent on the types of bacteria, the types and concentrations of antibiotics. Moreover, the minimum inhibitory and bactericidal concentrations for Escherichia coli were obtained within 30 minutes, demonstrating the capacity of this method for rapid AST. Benefiting from the simplicity and portability of the optical fiber FPI-based nanomotion detection device, the developed nanomechanical biosensor in this study provides a promising technique for AST and a more rapid alternative for clinical laboratories.