Characteristics and Main Applications of Fiber Optic Sensor Technology

The emergence of fiber optic sensor technology and its main applications is a new exploration and development in the sensing technology industry today. The key to fiber optic sensing technology relies on fiber optic sensors. Fiber optic sensors should use optical signals as conversion and transmission carriers, mainly for precision measurement. It mainly uses the light transmission characteristics of optical fiber to transform the measurement into a sensor with light characteristics (intensity, phase, polarization, frequency, wavelength). This is the future light source that is transmitted to the modulator through optical fibers, causing changes in measurement parameters and optical properties (such as light intensity, wavelength, frequency, phase, normality, etc.), known as modulated signal light. It is transmitted to the photodetector through optical fibers, demodulated, and measured parameters are obtained. The following mainly introduces the characteristics and technical applications of fiber optic sensors, hoping to have great reference value for readers.

Characteristics of Fiber Optic Sensors

Unlike traditional sensors, optical fibers have excellent physical, chemical, mechanical, and transmission performance, making them small in size, light in weight, resistant to electromagnetic interference, corrosion, high in sensitivity, wide in measurement bandwidth, and long in distance between testing electronic products and sensors, forming a sensing network.

Advanced fiber optic sensors are several orders of magnitude more sensitive than traditional sensors and can detect over 70 physical quantities. In summary, it has several advantages:

1. High accuracy, fast response time, wide range of linear characteristics, good repeatability, and high signal-to-noise ratio of detection signals. Due to the current mass production of optical fibers, which are of high quality and affordable, they can be widely used.

2. Fiber optic is made of dielectric material quartz, which transmits optical signals. It has good safety and stability, strong resistance to electromagnetic interference, and is suitable for flammable, explosive or toxic natural conditions such as electricity, crude oil, chemical industry, metallurgy, etc.

3. Strong corrosion resistance and pollution resistance, suitable for areas with large temperature differences, good aging characteristics, and long working life.

4. Small size, light weight, convenient installation, and strong adaptability to the environment of the tested object.

5. Fiber optic is a passive device with good self-awareness, which will not damage the measurement state.

6. Measuring objects are very common. At present, various physical, chemical, and biomass fiber optic sensors have different characteristics in measuring temperature, pressure, offset, rate, liquid level, radiation, and so on.

7. Multipoint multiplexing is convenient, with low transmission loss, suitable for forming measurement networks and completing real-time intelligent monitoring of multiple points.

Applying fiber optic sensor technology in these areas:

1、 Fiber optic gyroscope

According to the principle, fiber optic gyroscopes can be divided into intervention type, resonant type, and Brillouin type, which are representative of the third generation fiber optic gyroscopes. The first generation intervention fiber optic gyroscope technology is mature and suitable for mass production and commercialization; The second generation resonant fiber optic gyroscope is still in the stage of laboratory research and productization development; The third generation Brillouin type is still in the theoretical research stage.

There are three completion methods for fiber optic gyroscope structures based on the optoelectronic devices used: small discrete component systems, all fiber optic systems, and integrated optoelectronic device systems. At present, the technology of discrete optoelectronic devices has been basically withdrawn. All fiber optic systems are used for high-precision and low-cost open-loop fiber optic gyroscopes. The integrated optical device gyroscope is very popular in high-precision fiber optic gyroscopes due to its simple process, good overall repeatability, and low cost, and is a key way to complete fiber optic gyroscopes.

2、 Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors

At present, fiber Bragg grating sensors are one of the research hotspots in the field of sensors both domestically and internationally. Most traditional fiber optic sensors can be divided into two types: light intensity type and intervention type. The disadvantages of light intensity sensors are unstable light sources, fiber loss, and easy aging of detectors; The intervention sensor needs to have a fixed positioning point because the light intensity of the dual intervention light is the same.

The currently developed fiber Bragg grating sensors, mainly based on fiber Bragg gratings, can prevent the above two situations, and their sensing signals have strong wavelength deployment and reuse capabilities. Fiber Bragg grating sensors are ideal sensitive components for engineering health detection, impact detection, shape control, and vibration reduction detection. Fiber grating sensors are widely used in geodynamics, spacecraft, power industry and chemical sensing.

3、 Fiber optic current sensor

The rapid development of the power industry has promoted the continuous growth of the capacity of power transmission systems, with higher operating voltage levels and higher currents, making it difficult to measure, demonstrating the advantages of fiber optic current sensors. In the power supply system, traditional current measurement sensors use electromagnetic induction as the carrier, which has the following defects: easy to explode, causing catastrophic accidents; The large fault current leads to ferromagnetic saturation, ferroresonance effect, slow frequency response, low detection accuracy, easily affected signals, large volume and weight, and expensive prices, making it difficult to meet the development needs of the new generation of data grids. At this point, fiber optic current sensors are emerging at the right time.

4、 Optical fiber hydrophone

Optical fiber hydrophone is mainly used to measure underwater acoustic signals. By using high sensitivity fiber optic correlation detection, the underwater acoustic signal is converted into an optical signal and transmitted to the signal processing system for recognition through fiber optic. Compared with the traditional hydrophone, the optical fiber hydrophone has the characteristics of high sensitivity, wide response band, and no interference signal. It is widely used in military, oil exploration, environmental monitoring and other fields, and has certain development prospects.

According to the principle, fiber hydrophone can be divided into intervention type, intensity type, grating type, etc. The core technology of the intervention type optical fiber hydrophone has gradually developed and improved, and has produced goods in some industries; Fiber grating hydrophone is a hot research topic at present. Key technologies include light sources, fiber optic devices, probe technology, anti polarization attenuation technology, anti phase attenuation technology, signal processing technology, multi reuse technology, and engineering design.

In summary, fiber optic sensors are developing towards sensitivity, accuracy, strong adaptability, refinement, and intelligence. Due to its advantages such as heat resistance, corrosion resistance, and moisture resistance, fiber optic sensors have gained more applications in more industries and are also favored by various industries.

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