Uniform spacing interrogation of a Fourier domain mode-locked fiber Bragg grating sensor system using a polarization-maintaining fiber Sagnac interferometer

Meas Sci Technol. 2013 Jun 1;24(6):65101. doi: 10.1088/0957-0233/24/6/065101.

Abstract

A novel linearized interrogation method is presented for a Fourier domain mode-locked (FDML) fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor system. In a high speed regime over several tens of kHz modulations, a sinusoidal wave is available to scan the center wavelength of an FDML wavelength-swept laser, instead of a conventional triangular wave. However, sinusoidal wave modulation suffers from an exaggerated non-uniform wavelength-spacing response in demodulating the time-encoded parameter to the absolute wavelength. In this work, the calibration signal from a polarization-maintaining fiber Sagnac interferometer shares the FDML wavelength-swept laser for FBG sensors to convert the time-encoded FBG signal to the wavelength-encoded uniform-spacing signal.

Keywords: Sagnac interferometer; fiber Bragg grating; wavelength-swept laser.