FIONA - Fiber sensing Interrogation based on nONlinear dynamics of lAser diodes (FWOAL905)

Lasers and optical fibres are part of our daily life: most of our phone calls, e-mails and website visits are transmitted by lasers as a series of very fast light signals through optical fibres. But these components not only serve communication purposes. Optical fibres can also be very efficient sensors, for example to measure strain or temperature. Such sensors are traditionally interrogated by sending well-specified light from a either broadband light source or a tuneable laser and measuring the reflected signal as precisely as possible. In this project we propose a radically different approach by exploiting the nonlinear dynamics of laser diodes. When a small amount of light is reflected back into a laser, it can be quickly destabilized and exhibit complex dynamics, which are strongly dependent on the properties of the reflected signal. Since the laser response is intrinsically linked with the non-uniform reflection spectrum of the fiber optic sensor, we want to trace back variations in the dynamics of the laser to changes of the reflection profile of the optical fibre sensor, hence taking advantage of the hypersensitivity of semiconductor lasers. We will investigate the fibre sensor’s reflection profile, its polarization properties and time delay. This strategy could lead to simpler and cheaper interrogation devices whilst providing hypersensitivity and ultra-high read-out frequencies and thereby push the frontier of fibre optic sensing.

Keywords:Nonlinear dynamics, laser diodes

Disciplines:Photonics, optoelectronics and optical communications