Wavelength-swept lasers and their application to fiber optic sensors

The wavelength swept laser (WSL) is a promising optical source in optical coherence tomography, optical fiber sensor, and optical beat source generation. It is demonstrated by employing a narrowband wavelength-scanning filter, such as a fast rotating polygonal-scanner-filter, a diffraction grating on a galvo-scan mirror, or a fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filter (FFP-TF). In this manuscript, we present our researches on the dynamic fiber-optic sensors. Two kinds of WSLs are used to demonstrate the dynamic measurement in the fiber-optic sensors. One is the WSL using a polygon-scanner-based wavelength filter and the other is the Fourier domain mode-locked (FDML) WSL using a FFP-TF. The dynamic fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor interrogation up to 2 kHz by using the WSL with a polygonscanner- based wavelength filter is reported. And by using the FDML WSL with a FFP-TF, we demonstrate a resonance FBG sensor interrogation. As another application of the WSL, we successfully measure a dynamic modulation frequency of the applied electric field using a nematic liquid crystal Fabry-Perot etalon.