Proposal for a Wavelength-Independent Optical Sensor Based on an Asymmetric Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

A wavelength-independent optical sensor based on an asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer (AMZI) is proposed. The optical sensor based on an AMZI is very sensitive to wavelength, and wavelength drift will lead to measurement error. The optical sensor is compensated to reduce its dependence on wavelength. The insensitivity of the optical sensor to wavelength mainly depends on the compensation structure, which is composed of an AMZI cascaded with another AMZI and can compensate the wavelength drift. The influence of wavelength drift on the optical sensor can be counteracted by carefully designing the size parameters of the compensation structure. When the wavelength changes from 1549.9 nm to 1550.1 nm, the error after compensation can be lower than 0.066%. Furthermore, the effect of fabrication tolerance on compensation results is analyzed. The proposed compensation method can also be used to compensate the drift of other parameters such as temperature, and can be applied to the compensation of other interference-based optical devices.