Long-period Fiber Grating Filter Research Articles

Dynamic Responses Measured by Optical Fiber Sensor for Structural Health Monitoring

An optical fiber sensing system integrating a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor, a long-period fiber grating (LPFG) optical filter and a photodetector is presented to monitor the dynamic response of a structure subjected to base excitation and impact loading. The FBG sensor is attached to a test specimen and connected to an LPFG filter. As the light reflected from the FBG sensor is transmitted through the long-period fiber grating filter, the intensity of the light is modulated by the wavelength, which is affected by the strain of the FBG. By measuring the intensity of the light using a photodetector, the wavelength reflected from the FBG sensor can be demodulated, thus leading to the determination of the strain in the structure. To demonstrate its effectiveness, the proposed sensing system was employed to measure the dynamic strain of a beam subjected to mechanical testing. The mechanical tests comprised three load scenarios: base excitation by a shaker at resonant frequency, impact loading by a hammer and shock test on a drop table. To monitor the dynamic strain during the test and validate the accuracy of the measurement of the FBG sensor, strain gauge was used as reference. Experimental results show good correlation between the measurements of FBG sensor and strain gauge. The present work provides a fast response and easy-to-implement optical fiber sensing system for structural health monitoring based on real-time dynamic strain measurements.

Sandwiched long-period fiber grating filter based on periodic SU8-thick photoresist technique

A loss-tunable sandwiched long-period fiber grating (SLPFG) filter is proposed in this Letter. This SLPFG utilized thick SU8 photoresist layers to induce refractive index modulations, and ultrahigh period precision was hence achieved. The external force required to tune this SLPFG filter is about 0.3942 N with the deepest loss attenuation 31.29 dB at 1534 nm wavelength. This process not only improves the overall performance of traditional long period fiber grating but also cuts down the facility cost by 50%. The proposed SLPFG has great potential for low-cost and compact force transducer applications.

Terahertz-bandwidth high-order temporal differentiators based on phase-shifted long-period fiber gratings

We report the fabrication of a pi-phase-shifted long-period fiber grating (LPFG) capable of operating as a terahertz-bandwidth second-order temporal differentiator. We demonstrate its operation experimentally by differentiating subpicosecond long optical pulses. A new scheme for achieving high-order photonic temporal differentiation based on LPFG filters is also proposed and demonstrated. In particular, we prepared a LPFG-based first-order differentiator that was frequency and bandwidth matched to the second-order device and demonstrated the cascadability of these devices leading to the implementation of a third-order differentiator. By also employing these devices in reflection, up to the fifth-order differentiation is demonstrated experimentally.

Nonlinear pulse compression of picosecond parabolic-like pulses synthesized with a long period fiber grating filter

tract: We demonstrate high quality pulse compression at high repetition rates by use of spectral broadening of short parabolic-like pulses in a normally-dispersive highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) followed by linear dispersion compensation with a conventional SMF-28 fiber. The key contribution of this work is on the use of a simple and efficient long-period fiber grating (LPFG) filter for synthesizing the desired parabolic-like pulses from sech(2)-like input optical pulses; this all-fiber low-loss filter enables reducing significantly the required input pulse power as compared with the use of previous all-fiber pulse re-shaping solutions (e.g. fiber Bragg gratings). A detailed numerical analysis has been performed in order to optimize the system's performance, including investigation of the optimal initial pulse shape to be launched into the HNLF fiber. We found that the pulse shape launched into the HNLF is critically important for suppressing the undesired wave breaking in the nonlinear spectral broadening process. The optimal shape is found to be independent on the parameters of normally dispersive HNLFs. In our experiments, 1.5-ps pulses emitted by a 10-GHz mode-locked laser are first reshaped into 3.2-ps parabolic-like pulses using our LPFG-based pulse reshaper. Flat spectrum broadening of the amplified initial parabolic-like pulses has been generated using propagation through a commercially-available HNLF. Pulses of 260 fs duration with satellite peak and pedestal suppression greater than 17 dB have been obtained after the linear dispersion compensation fiber. The generated pulses exhibit a 20-nm wide supercontinuum energy spectrum that has almost a square-like spectral profile with >85% of the pulse energy contained in its FWHM spectral bandwidth.

Synthesis of long-period fiber gratings with a Lagrange multiplier optimization method

Based on the Lagrange multiplier optimization (LMO) method, a new synthesis approach for designing complex long-period fiber grating (LPG) filters is developed and demonstrated. The proposed synthesis method is a simple and direct approach. It was used to efficiently search for optimal solutions and constrain various parameters of the designed LPG filters according to practical requirements. The inverse scattering algorithm is a good tool for designing FBG filters; as well as for designing transmission-type fiber grating filters like LPGs. Compared to the results of the discrete layer-peeling (DLP) inverse scattering algorithm for LPGs, the synthesized LPGs, using the LMO approach, are more flexible and workable for the constraint conditions can be easily set in the user-defined cost functional, such as the limitation on the maximum value of the refractive index modulation and the parameters of the initial guess in LMO algorithm. Linear transmission LPG filters and EDFA gain flattening filters are synthesized and analyzed systematically by using the proposed method with different parameters. Moreover, as a variation-based method, we find that the convergence and the synthesized results of the LMO method are strongly dependent on the initial guess parameters.

Designing optimal long-period fiber gratings with the overlapped Gaussian-apodization method for flattening EDFA gain spectra

A new and effective optimization approach to the inverse design problems of complex long-period fiber grating (LPG) filters was developed in the present study. The proposed synthesis method was based on the overlapped Gaussian-apodization method and the evolutionary optimization algorithm which can efficiently search for optimal solutions and simultaneously take into account various experimental requirements for the fabrication of the designed filters. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, a LPG filter for flattening EDFA gain spectra was designed. Compared to the existing results from discrete layer-peeling (DLP) inverse scattering algorithms, an LPG filter with adaptive grating lengths and much simpler, smoother, and less complicated coupling coefficient profiles for taking the practical fabrication conditions for gain flattening into account, was used in the proposed method. Simulation results confirm that optimal solutions of an LPG filter design are suitable for practical fabrication.

Gain flattened and improved double-pass two-stage EDFA using microbending long-period fiber gratings

An optical gain flattened and improved double-pass two-stage EDFA is proposed using microbending long-period fiber grating (LPFG) filters. This type of filter, based on mechanically induced microbends, has desirable characteristics for gain flattening in an EDFA. As such, it is shown that the incorporation a filter in a reflective EDFA can increase the optical gain, plus the optimum position of the filter is obtained as a function of the pump wavelength and power. Accordingly, when using microbending LPFG filters in the second stage of a double-pass two-stage EDFA, an improved flat gain is obtained with a gain improvement of 2.8 dB and gain flatness of less than 1 dB over a 33-nm wavelength range.

Spectral shape tunable band-rejection filter using a long-period fiber grating with divided coil heaters

We have developed a new type of tunable band rejection filter, which provides high spectral-shaping flexibility in a wide tuning range. The filter consists of a long-period fiber grating (LPFG) with divided coil heaters. Each of the divided coil heaters is controlled individually to adjust a temperature distribution along the LPFG and to modify the spectral shape of the LPFG filter. The tunable band rejection filter is demonstrated to function properly when applied as an erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain-flattening filter.

Evolutionary programming synthesis of optimal long-period fiber grating filters for EDFA gain flattening

An innovative long-period fiber grating (LPG) synthesis method based on the stochastic evolutionary programming (EP) algorithms is demonstrated to be effective for designing optimal LPG filters. Synthesis of a single-stage LPG filter for the entire C-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) gain flattening is used as an example to show the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that good EDFA gain flattening for the entire band can be achieved with a single-stage LPG filter that is properly designed.

Design of binary long-period fiber grating filters by the inverse-scattering method with genetic algorithm optimization.

An approach is presented to the design of binary long-period fiber grating (LPFG) filters based on the Gel'fand-Levitan-Marchenko (GLM) inverse-scattering method and genetic algorithm optimization. The nonuniform coupling strength of the binary grating can be realized by varying the local duty ratio. A coupled-mode theory combined with the Poisson sum formula for treating the binary index perturbation is developed for the application of the GLM synthesis method. Since the coupled-mode theory, which smears out the discrete coupling nature, can be regarded only as an approximation to the modeling of a binary LPFG, we use instead the transfer-matrix model to analyze the coupling behavior of a nonuniform binary LPFG. Based on the synthesized grating patterns from the GLM method, a real-coded genetic algorithm with the transfer-matrix model is used to compensate for the discrepancies resulting from use of the coupled-mode theory and to optimize the design. We exemplify the above procedure by designing a flatband LPFG filter and a high-visibility all-fiber Mach-Zehnder filter.