Interrogation techniques for fiber Bragg grating sensor arrays need particular attention in the case of structural health monitoring applications involving dynamic strain measurement. Typically the performance of the sensing system is dependent on both the sensor type and the interrogation method employed. A novel interrogation system is proposed here that consists of different interrogation units for each sensor in the array, each unit comprising of a circulator, chirped grating and a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. We present an analysis that consists of tracking the spectral changes as the light passes through various elements in the interrogation system. This is expected to help in the optimization of sensor and interrogation elements leading to improved performance of the health monitoring system.

Date Published: 17 February 2003
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 4833, Applications of Photonic Technology 5, (17 February 2003); doi: 10.1117/12.473926

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4833:
Applications of Photonic Technology 5
Roger A. Lessard; George A. Lampropoulos; Gregory W. Schinn, Editor(s)