This paper presents a novel improvement in the optical path structure of a three-wavelength symmetric demodulation method applied to extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (EFPI) fiber optic acoustic sensors. The traditional approach of using couplers to construct the phase difference in the symmetric demodulation method is replaced with a new approach that combines the symmetric demodulation algorithm with wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology. This improvement addresses the issue of a suboptimal coupler split ratio and phase difference, which can affect the accuracy and performance of the symmetric demodulation method. In an anechoic chamber test environment, the symmetric demodulation algorithm implemented with the WDM optical path structure achieved a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 75.5 dB (1 kHz), a sensitivity of 1104.9 mV/Pa (1 kHz), and a linear fitting coefficient of 0.9946. In contrast, the symmetric demodulation algorithm implemented with the traditional coupler-based optical path structure achieved an SNR of 65.1 dB (1 kHz), a sensitivity of 891.75 mV/Pa (1 kHz), and a linear fitting coefficient of 0.9905. The test results clearly indicate that the improved optical path structure based on WDM technology outperforms the traditional coupler-based optical path structure in terms of sensitivity, SNR, and linearity.
Keywords: EFPI fiber optic sensor; three-wavelength phase demodulation; wavelength division multiplexing.