Miniature Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Interrogator (FBG-TransceiverTM) System For Use in Aerospace and Automotive Health Monitoring Systems

Fiber Bragg grating sensors (FBGs) have gained rapid acceptance in aerospace and automotive structural health monitoring applications for the measurement of strain, stress, vibration, acoustics, acceleration, pressure, temperature, moisture, and corrosion distributed at multiple locations within the structure using a single fiber element. The most prominent advantages of FBGs are: small size and light weight, multiple FBG transducers on a single fiber, and immunity to radio frequency interference. A major disadvantage of FBG technology is that conventional state-of-the-art fiber Bragg grating interrogation systems are typically bulky and heavy bench top instruments that are assembled from off-the-shelf fiber optic and optical components integrated with a signal electronics board into an instrument console. Based on the need for a compact FBG interrogation system, this paper describes recent progress towards the development of a miniature fiber Bragg grating sensor interrogator (FBG-TransceiverTM) system based on multi-channel integrated optic sensor (InOSense) microchip technology. The hybrid InOSense microchip technology enables the integration of all of the functionalities, both passive and active, of conventional bench top FBG sensor interrogators systems, packaged in a miniaturized, low power operation, 2-cm x 5-cm small form factor (SFF) package suitable for the long-term structural health monitoring in applications where size, weight, and power are critical for operation. The sponsor of this program is NAVAIR under a DOD SBIR contract.