Performance analysis of peak tracking techniques for fiber Bragg grating interrogation systems

• Autor(a) principal: Tosi,Daniele
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Olivero,Massimo, Perrone,Guido
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Journal of Microwaves. Optoelectronics and Electromagnetic Applications
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2179-10742012000200003
• topic: Fiber Bragg grating (FBG); fiber optic sensor (FOS); optical instrumentation; Monte Carlo simulation

In this paper, we propose a spectral correlation-based technique for tracking the wavelength shift of a fiber Bragg grating. We compared this approach, by means of a Monte Carlo numerical simulation, to the typical peak tracking techniques applied in classic interrogation systems. As result, we obtained a considerable gain in terms of noise tolerance (about 20 dB), which can be further incremented by selecting large-bandwidth gratings. This permits to increase the power budget of a fiber Bragg grating interrogator without changing the optical layout, overcoming classical limitations of commercial and custom systems. Penalties due to the non-idealities have been evaluated through the same Monte Carlo approach. Finally, we discuss a practical application of the peak tracking techniques to a fiber Bragg grating-based weight sensor, in which we applied the spectral correlation to track both the Bragg wavelength position, spectral deformations due to high strain, and spectral non-linearity.