A Fiber-Optic Array Spectrometer With Parallel Multichannel Optical Lock-in Detection and its Application to in Situ Lighting Measurements

This article describes a new optical spectroscopy instrument achieving lock-in detection in all its spectral output channels in a parallel and simultaneous fashion. It is based on two identical compact array spectrometers working in phase quadrature thanks to optical modulators synchronized with an external reference signal. In the application example, the optical lock-in spectrometer was used to perform spectral irradiance measurements with commercial LED lamps exhibiting temporal light modulation at different frequencies. A remote sensing optical device was designed to measure from a distance the temporal luminous waveform of a specific LED lamp and send it to the reference input of the optical lock-in spectrometer. When the lamps were operating together on top of a large continuous luminous background, the optical lock-in spectrometer successfully retrieved the respective spectral irradiance distributions and color parameters of each lamp, allowing their characterization to be performed independently of the other light sources illuminating the sensor during the measurements.