• Acta Photonica Sinica
  • Vol. 51, Issue 11, 1106004 (2022)
Zhuang CHANG1、2 and Yi JIANG1、*
Author Affiliations
  • 1School of Optics and Photonics,Beijing Institute of Technology,Beijing 100081,China
  • 2Key Laboratory of Photonic Information Technology,Ministry of Industry and Information Technology,Beijing 100081,China
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    DOI: 10.3788/gzxb20225111.1106004 Cite this Article
    Zhuang CHANG, Yi JIANG. Multi-channel Optical Fiber EFPI Absolute Cavity Length Measurement System Based on FPGA Control and White-light Interference Technology[J]. Acta Photonica Sinica, 2022, 51(11): 1106004 Copy Citation Text show less

    Abstract

    With the rapid development of aerospace industry, optical fiber sensing technology has been widely used. The optical fiber sensor does not contain electronic components, so it has strong anti-electromagnetic interference ability and good electrical insulation, it can be used in many kinds of environment. It uses light wave transmission in an optical fiber to obtain the outside signal and measure the relative physical quantity. Fiber optics can both transmit light and sense signals. When the optical fiber sensor detects the measured physical quantity, the parameters such as wavelength, intensity, phase and frequency of the transmitted light wave will change. The optical fiber sensor can measure hundreds of physical quantities, including temperature, pressure, strain, displacement, acceleration and so on. The use of optical fiber sensors has become more and more popular in recent years, in the military defense, aerospace, industrial control, measurement and testing, exploration and other fields have a broad market. At present, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors and Fiber Fabry-Perot (F-P) sensors are mainly used in practical applications. The optical fiber EFPI sensor has many advantages, such as small volume, high precision and large dynamic range. At present, there are two demodulation methods for the measurement of optical fiber EFPI sensor, one is fiber laser interferometry, the other is fiber white light interferometry. The former is suitable for the relative measurement of dynamic signals, while the latter is generally used for the absolute measurement of static or slowly varying signals. White light interferometry can realize absolute measurement, which has the advantages of a large dynamic range and strong anti-interference ability. Currently, various types of white light interferometry demodulation methods have been applied, including peak method, wavelength tracking method, interference order method, principal frequency method and Fourier transform method. Because of its various advantages, this technology can be widely used in practical engineering. With the increasing demand of the latest applications, the research on high-speed fiber-optic white-light interferometry has become the main trend in the future. With the increasing demand of applications, such as the monitoring of the surface pressure of the space engine and the strain produced at the moment of explosion, these unstable static physical variables change very frequently. In order to get better measurement results, high-speed white-light interferometry is studied. But it is difficult to achieve the absolute measurement of high-speed signals and achieve the required resolution. In general, the measurement system will be limited by the scanning light source module and computer processing speed and other factors. As the number of signals to be processed increases, the measurement speed decreases. Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processor can solve the speed problem. Because it contains a lot of digital logic resources and rich RAM resources, FPGA can process and analyze data at the same time. The speed of demodulation can be improved by combining FPGA with white-light interferometry. In this paper, a multichannel high-speed Extrinsic Fabry-Perot Interferometric (EFPI) sensor interrogation system based on White-Light Interferometry (WLI) and FPGA is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The system uses a semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) and a Fiber Fabry-Perot Tunable Filter (FFP-TF) to make a high-speed wavelength scanning fiber laser. The symmetrical triangular wave technology drives the tunable Fabry-Perot filter to generate a swept spectrum, the scanning frequency is 2 kHz. Use FPGA to realize high-speed signal demodulation of EFPI sensor. The system realizes high-speed demodulation of EFPI sensors with 4 channels, the demodulation speed of each channel reaches 2 kHz.
    Zhuang CHANG, Yi JIANG. Multi-channel Optical Fiber EFPI Absolute Cavity Length Measurement System Based on FPGA Control and White-light Interference Technology[J]. Acta Photonica Sinica, 2022, 51(11): 1106004
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