Hexagonal Mesh Architecture for Large-Area Multipoint Fiber Sensor System

This letter presents a reliable hexagonal mesh architecture for a large-area multipoint fiber sensor system. While covering a large area, the proposed mesh architecture demarcates a large number of fiber sensing regions. Within each sensing region, a ring subnet is constructed to serve many fiber Bragg grating (FBG). In particular, the proposed sensor system incorporates the fiber laser scheme cooperation with the signal-averaging module to enhance its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance. The self-restored capability of the proposed system is achieved by optical switches, allowing it to protect numerous FBG sensors against fiber break(s). A higher SNR with respect to any FBG sensor setting in our experiment is available due to the signal-averaging module.