High-speed and high-resolution YAG fiber based distributed high temperature sensing system empowered by a 2D image restoration algorithm

High temperature monitoring is critical to the health and performance of vital pieces of infrastructure such as jet engine, fuel cells, coal gasifiers, and nuclear reactor core. However, it remains a big challenge to realize reliable distributed high temperature sensing system with high speed, high spatial and temperature resolution simultaneously. In this work, a Raman distributed high temperature sensing system with high temperature resolution and high spatial resolution was realized in a single-crystal YAG fiber. The sensing system demonstrated operation from room temperature up to 1400°C with a spatial resolution of 7 cm and response time of 1 millisecond in a 1m long YAG fiber. The average temperature sensitivity of the system is about 7.95 × 10 −4 /°C. To the best of our knowledge, this is the best spatial resolution and response time reported in literature. In this system, a 2D image restoration was used to boost the signal to noise ratio of sensor. Empowered by the algorithm, the average temperature standard deviation along the sensing fiber of 7.89 °C was obtained based on a single frame data in 1 millisecond. A new record of temperature resolution of 0.62 °C was demonstrated in only 1 second frame data traces, which enables a fast response capacity.