Improving the Signal-to-Noise Ratio of Time Domain Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Based on Hybrid Simplex and Golay Coding Technique

We report on the experimental results of the combination of unique auto-correlation properties of Golay complementary code and Hadamard matrix properties of standard simplex code. The combination of the two coding techniques results in improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of time domain multiplexed fiber Bragg grating (TDM-FBG) sensor for temperature measurement. Previously, we have analyzed the properties of both coding techniques when deployed separately in the TDM-FBG sensor. In this case, both coding techniques result in the same amount of SNR improvement for code length longer than 31 bits. In this paper, we demonstrate the combination and simultaneous deployment of the two techniques to measure multiple FBGs under room condition (25 °C) and 50 °C temperature. The two schemes combination results in remarkable improvement of SNR and still retains the original spatial property of the decoded FBG signals, confirming the successful deployment of the hybrid codes. From the measurement of two FBG sensors located after 16 km of fiber, the combination of 31 bits of simplex- and 64 bits of Golay codes has resulted in a total of 10.5 dB improvement of SNR.