High-Speed AWG-Based Interrogation of Fabry-Perot Based Fiber Sensors

In the work we developed an interrogator for fiber optic sensors based on a Fabry-Pérot interferometer. The interrogator was based on a arrayed waveguide grating with 16 channels and semiconductor optical amplifier. The semiconductor optical amplifier served two functions: as a source of broadband probe radiation and as an amplifier for the optical signal. The advantage of the proposed scheme is its completely passive realization and high signal-to-noise ratio, which together enable it to interrogate sensors with a high rate. Also, the use in the scheme of two optical elements only gives us the opportunity to implement a compact interrogator. The fiber sensor based Fabry-Pérot interferometer with on two conventional fiber connectors and piezoelectric ceramics is used for demonstration of high-rate performance of the developed interrogator. As a result, the signal demodulation for sensor modulated with frequency of 2 kHz is performed with an error of 50 pm, which is less than 1.5% of the sensor operating range.