Optical sensor interrogation with a blazed fiber Bragg grating and a charge-coupled device linear array.
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.
Simpson
Alexander G
AG
Photonics Research Group, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham B4 7ET, United Kingdom. appopt@george-simpson.co.uk
Zhou
Kaiming
K
Zhang
Lin
L
Everall
Lorna
L
Bennion
Ian
I