Realization of Rapid Debugging for Detection Circuit of Optical Fiber Gas Sensor： Using an Analog Signal Source

An optical fiber gas sensor mainly consists of two parts： optical part and detection circuit. In the debugging for the detection circuit, the optical part usually serves as a signal source. However, in the debugging condition, the optical part can be easily influenced by many factors, such as the fluctuation of ambient temperature or driving current resulting in instability of the wavelength and intensity for the laser; for dual-beam sensor, the different bends and stresses of^the optical fiber will lead to the fluctuation of the intensity and phase; the intensity noise from the collimator, coupler, and other optical devices in the system will also result in the impurity of the optical part based signal source. In order to dramatically improve the debugging efficiency of the detection circuit and shorten the period of research and development, this paper describes an analog signal source, consisting of a single chip microcomputer （SCM）, an amplifier circuit, and a voltage-to-current conversion circuit. It can be used to realize the rapid debugging detection circuit of the optical fiber gas sensor instead of optical part based signal source. This analog signal source performs well with many other advantages, such as the simple operation, small size, and light weight.

Advances in Optical Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Technologies

The authors review their recent advances in the development of optical fiber Bragg grating （FBG） sensor technologies. After a brief review of the fiber grating sensors, several newly developed FBG sensors are described. With the continuous development of fiber materials, microstructures and post-processing technologies, FBG sensors are still creative after the first demonstration of permanent gratings thirty years ago.

Gas Absorption Center-Based Wavelength Calibration Technique in QEPAS System for SNR Improvement

A simple and effective wavelength calibration scheme is proposed in a quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy （QEPAS） system for trace gas detection. A reference gas cell is connected an InGaAs photodetector for detecting the absorption intensity peak caused by the gas to calibrate the gas absorption center using distributed feedback laser diode （DFB-LD） with sawtooth wave driver current. The gas absorption wavelength calibration and gas sensing operations are conducted at a special internal to eliminate the wavelength shift of DFB-LD caused by the ambient fluctuations. Compared with the conventional wavelength modulation spectroscopy （WMS）, this method uses a lower lock-in amplifier bandwidth and averaging algorithm to improve signal noise ratio （SNR）. Water vapor is chosen as a sample gas to evaluate its performance. In the experiments, the impact of sawtooth wave frequency and lock-in amplifier bandwidth on the harmonic signal is analyzed, and the wavelength-calibration technique-based system achieves a minimum detection limit （MDL） of 790ppbv and SNR with 13.4 improvement factor compared with the conventional WMS system.

Synthesis, Characterization and Gas Sensing Properties of Graphene Oxide-Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Composite

Graphene oxide （GO）-multiwalled carbon nanotube （MWCNT） composite was synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, micro Raman, Fourier transform infrared and ultraviolet-visible near infrared spectroscopy techniques. Spectral characteris- tics of cladding modified fiber optic gas sensors were studied for various concentrations of ammonia, ethanol and methanol at 27 ℃. Thickness of the gas sensing layer was controlled by varying the concentration of composite in ethanol medium （0.5 and 1 mg/mL） for three times dipping process. The O.S mg/ mL concentrated GO-MWCNT coated sensor showed 1.20, 1.40 and 1.15 times higher sensitivity than the GO coated sensor for ammonia, ethanol and methanol vapors, respectively. Furthermore, it exhibited 1.50, 1.80 and 1.80 times better sensitivity than 1 mg/mL concentrated GO-MWCNT coated sensor for ammonia, ethanol and methanol vapors, respectively. The presence of functional groups in GO increased the sen- sitivity. This is mainly attributed to the effective electron charge transfer between the composite materials and analytes.