Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Interrogation Using Tunable Erbium-Doped Fiber Ring Laser Source

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) are ideal sensors for temperature, strain or vibration sensing applications with their advantages over conventional electronics sensor systems. In this paper, two different FBG sensor interrogation schemes based on broadband ASE source and tunable EDFRL source are demonstrated and compared. With both interrogator configurations, the response of the FBG sensor to temperature change is found to be linear and the sensitivities are measured as 11 pm/°C and 10.5 pm/°C, respectively. The experimental results have revealed that the optical power reflected from the FBG sensor is almost 20 dB higher with tunable EDFRL source than broadband ASE source. Thus, an interrogation method with tunable EDFRL can be suitable for remote, quasi-distributed sensor applications requiring high output power and OSNR.