Photonic crystal fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer with microholes ablated by a femtosecond laser for refractive index sensing

A new structure of the photonic crystal fiber（PCF）based Mach-Zednder interferometer（MZI）is fabricated and presented.The structure has microholes ablated by a femtosecond laser.The fringe visibility can be enhanced more than 10 dB compared with the interferometer without a microhole.The interferometer is characterized by sodium chloride solutions for refractive index（RI）sensing.The RI sensitivities are greatly increased by the hole fabrication since it directly changes the cladding modes of the PCF.For the interferometer sensor with two holes,the RI sensitivity is 157.74 nm/RIU,which is 5 times than that of the sensor without a microhole.Microholes ablation with a femtosecond laser on PCF can increase the sensor＇s sensitivity dramatically.Femtosecond laser has a wide application prospect in the field of performance improvement of the sensors.

Fiber Laser Sensor Based on a Phase-Shifted Chirped Grating for Acoustic Sensing of Partial Discharges

Acoustic emission monitoring is often used in the diagnosis of electrical and mechanical incipient faults in the high voltage apparatus. Partial discharges are a major source of insulation failure in electric power transformers, and the differentiation from other sources of acoustic emission is of the utmost importance. This paper reports the development of a new sensor concept - a fiber laser sensor based on a phase-shifted chirped fiber grating - for the acoustic emission detection of incipient faults in oil-filled power transformers. These sensors can be placed in the inner surface of the transformer tank wall, not affecting the insulation integrity of the structure and improving fault detection and location. The performance of the sensing head is characterized and compared for different surrounding media： air, water, and oil. The results obtained indicate the feasibility of this sensing approach for the industrial development of practical solutions.

Low-Frequency Vibration Measurement by a Dual-Frequency DBR Fiber Laser

A dual-frequency distributed Bragg reflector （DBR） fiber laser based sensor is demonstrated for low-frequency vibration measurement through the Doppler effect. The response of the proposed sensor is quite linear and is much higher than that of a conventional accelerometer. The proposed sensor can work down to 1 Hz with high sensitivity. Therefore, the proposed sensor is very efficient in low-frequency vibration measurement.

A fiber micro-vibration sensor based on single-mode fiber ring laser

A new micro-vibration sensor based on single-mode fiber ring laser is put forward. The Mach-Zehnder interferometric （MZI） detection technique is presented for interrogating laser frequency shift due to the measurand （piezoelectric transducer （PZT） is used to simulate the micro-vibration） induced laser cavity strain from both single- and multi-mode lasers. In the experiment, compared with multi-mode laser sensors, the single-mode laser sensor is proved to be a sensor with high resolution. When the PZT is driven by the analog signal （0.03 rad near 2 kHz）, the signal-to-noise ratio （SNR） of output signal from the single-mode laser sensor is close to 55 dB and the sensitivity of the sensor is about 5 ×10^-5 rad/Hz1/2.

DFB fiber laser sensor for simultaneous measurement of acoustic and magnetic fields

A novel distributed feedback（DFB） fiber laser sensor, which can measure acoustic and magnetic fields simultaneously, is proposed. The magnetic field can be measured by detecting the change of resonant frequency of the fiber laser, and the acoustic pressure can be measured by detecting the phase shift of the fiber laser. Both of the signals can be simultaneously demodulated in the frequency domain without affecting each other. Experimental studies show that the acoustic pressure sensitivity of this sensor is about-130 d B（0 dB re 1 pm∕μPa） and the sensor has a good linearity with a magnetic field sensitivity of 0.57 Hz∕mT.

Research Progress in the Key Device and Technology for Fiber Optic Sensor Network

The recent research progress in the key device and technology of the fiber optic sensor network （FOSN） is introduced in this paper. An architecture of the sensor optical passive network （SPON）, by employing hybrid wavelength division multiplexing/time division multiplexing （WDM/TDM） techniques similar to the fiber communication passive optical network （PON）, is proposed. The network topology scheme of a hybrid TDM/WDM/FDM （frequency division multiplexing） three-dimension fiber optic sensing system for achieving ultra-large capacity, long distance, and high resolution sensing performance is performed and analyzed. As the most important device of the FOSN, several kinds of light source are developed, including the wideband multi-wavelength fiber laser operating at C band, switchable and tunable 2 μm multi-wavelength fiber lasers, ultra-fast mode-locked fiber laser, as well as the optical wideband chaos source, which have very good application prospects in the FOSN. Meanwhile, intelligent management techniques for the FOSN including wideband spectrum demodulation of the sensing signals and real-time fault monitoring of fiber links are presented. Moreover, several typical applications of the FOSN are also discussed, such as the fiber optic gas sensing network, fiber optic acoustic sensing network, and strain/dynamic strain sensing network.

Study of Rayleigh-Backscattering Induced Coherence Collapse in an Asymmetric DFB FL Sensor

Rayleigh-back scattering induced coherence collapse of an asymmetric distributed feedback fiber laser （DFB FL） sensor is investigated using a composite cavity model. The coherence collapse threshold condition of the asymmetric DFB FL sensor is measured. The DFB FL sensor shows different dynamic behaviors in different pump configurations. According to the asymmetric behavior to the external optical feedback, a novel method to find the actual phase shift position of the asymmetric DFB FL sensor is presented.