Interrogation of a Long Period Grating Fiber Sensor With an Arrayed-Waveguide-Grating-Based Demultiplexer Through Curve Fitting

Interrogation of a long period grating (LPG) fiber sensor with an arrayed-waveguide-grating (AWG)-based demultiplexer through curve fitting is investigated and experimentally demonstrated. In the interrogation system, the measured light intensities from the output of the AWG are used to reconstruct the selected resonant dip of the LPG sensor through curve fitting in the form of a linear combination of Gaussian functions. By monitoring the changes of the reconstructed LPG spectrum, including the center wavelength shift and the minimum attenuation variation, the sensor signals can be interrogated with good accuracy in real time. The center wavelength is obtained by calculating the first-order derivative of the fitting function. The minimum attenuation is obtained directly from the reconstructed spectrum. Since the interrogation system demonstrated is based on an all-solid-state optical device, it offers the advantages of compact size and high-speed interrogation with high potential for integration.