Research on a Pulse Interference Filter Used for the Fiber Bragg Grating Interrogation System

Abstract

In this paper, a novel pulse interference filter for fiber Bragg grating (FBG) interrogation based on the tunable Fabry-Perot (F-P) filtering principle is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The self-developed FBG interrogation system is devised for the aircraft health management of key structures. Nevertheless, the pulse interference is detected in the reflection spectrum of FBG causing interrogation system unstable. To address the problem, the first-order lag pulse broadening filter is proposed in this paper. The first-order lag filter is applied to preprocess and smooth the original signal, meanwhile enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Afterwards, peaks of reflection spectrum are distinguished with pulse interference by pulse broadening. Experimental results indicate that 634 peaks are detected before adopting the first-order lag pulse broadening filter. Comparatively, the number of peaks decreases to 203 after filtering the interference pulse, and the correct rate of peak detection is higher than 98.5%. Through the comparison with the finite impulse response (FIR) filter, the advantage of first-order lag filter is proved. The vibration monitoring experiment demonstrates that this system has high dynamic precision with a dynamic interrogation range of 0 Hz–400 Hz, and the maximum repetition rate of 800 Hz.