title: Optical sensor interrogation with a blazed fiber Bragg grating and a charge-coupled device linear array.
abstract: We present what is to our knowledge the first comprehensive investigation of the use of blazed fiber Bragg gratings (BFBGs) to interrogate wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) in-fiber optical sensor arrays. We show that the light outcoupled from the core of these BFBGs is radiated with sufficient optical power that it may be detected with a low-cost charge-coupled device (CCD) array. We present thorough system performance analysis that shows sufficient spectral-spatial resolution to decode sensors with a WDM separation of 75 rhom, signal-to-noise ratio greater than 45-dB bandwidth of 70 nm, and drift of only 0.1 rhom. We show the system to be polarization-state insensitive, making the BFBG-CCD spectral analysis technique a practical, extremely low-cost, alternative to traditional tunable filter approaches.
authors.affiliation: Photonics Research Group, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom. appopt@george-simpson.co.uk
authors.forename: Alexander G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Simpson
authors.forename: Kaiming
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Lorna
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Everall
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Bennion