Microwave photonics interrogation for multiplexing fiber Fabry-Perot sensors

Abstract

A microwave photonics interrogation system for multiplexing fiber Fabry–Perot (FP) sensors is demonstrated in this paper. Different from previous FP demodulation schemes, this system aims at quasi-distributed sensing networks composed of FP sensors with a short effective cavity length less than 1 mm. With the help of a dispersion element, the superimposed reflected spectrum from FP sensors based on a hollow core fiber (HCF) can be converted into separate response passbands in the frequency domain simultaneously, whose center frequency will shift linearly with the variations of environment. The experimental results exhibit high linearity and interrogation ability for both the all-FP multiplexing system and hybrid multiplexing system. A strain interrogation sensitivity of 0.938 kHz/µɛ and temperature sensitivity of −0.699 MHz/°C have been realized, corresponding to a FP cavity length demodulation sensitivity of 1.563 MHz/µm. Furthermore, numerical studies about the impacts of the HCF-FP spectrum envelope on the RF response passband, as well as the theoretical minimum detectable cavity length and multiplexing capacity of the system, are also carried out.