Optical Fiber Sensors for Smart Material
Using BOCDA Technique
Norfazilah Binti Samdin
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Johor Bharu,Malaysia
[email protected]AbstractThis research is done by a group of research in optical
fiber sensors lead by Kazuo Hotate at University of Tokyo. Its
describes optical fibers sensors for smart material, structures,
and optical communications in towards making the fiber-optic
nerve system. The BOCDA is technique that used by applying the
characteristics of the fiber itself, that is Brillouin Scattering. This
technique increased the value spatial resolution to 1cm.
Previously, there was optical time domain reflectometry used
which however holds limited on spatial resolution.
I.
INTRODUCTION
This study is describing optical fiber sensors for smart
material, structures, and optical communications. The main
purpose is making fiber optic nerves systems. Human nerves
enable to sense damages in the bodies, but this function is
applied to material and structures instead.
For example, by equipping an airplane wing with an optical
fiber sensor, it can use determine both the location and degree
of any damage in order to maintain the health of the wing
material. Moreover, it can detect the strain applied to a material
by installing fiber on its surface. Materials that have a selfdiagnosis function are sometimes called smart materials. While
by using similar technology it can obtain smart structure.
Pulse-based time domain techniques have been developed
as the distribution sensing mechanisms. However, these had
difficulties in realizing high performances, such as a high
spatial resolution and a high sampling rate. To overcome the
difficulties, an optical correlation domain technique with
continuous lightwave has been designed. By applying the
technique, for example, to controlling fiber Brillouin scattering,
a distributed strain sensing system with quite a high spatial
resolution and sampling rate had been built
The original technique however has been developed by this
research group to obtain distributed data along a fiber, and
realized a high spatial resolution which was difficult to obtain
using conventional ways.
II.
DISTRIBUTED AND MULTIPLEXED FIBER-OPTIC SENSING
To obtain such nerves system, it is need to use distributed
fiber-optic sensing scheme or a multiplexed fiber-optic sensing
scheme. The fiber Gragg grating has been developed, mainly
for communications, for filters, or for dispersion compensation.
However, those working in the sensor field have also used the
fiber Bragg grating (FBG) because its perform well as a starin
gauge or a temperature sensor. With one light source and one
detector it can obtain a large amount of information along a
fiber. This kind of approach is called the multiplexed sensing
technique. However, this method has drawback because the
damage may occur in a plane where the damage cannot
detected. Therefore, this to overcome this drawback, the aim is
to realize fully distributed sensing scheme. This can be achieve
by using the characteristics of the fiber itself, for example,
Raman scattering, Brillouin scattering, or polarization mode
coupling.
This kind technology has already been developed for fiber
optic nerve system, but previously they employed the optical
time domain reflectometry (OTDR). This approach imposes
limits regarding, spatial resolution, for example. By using
Brillouin scattering, for example, it may obtain strain
distribution information. However, OTDR technology is
limited in spatial resolution that approximately 1m. one meter
is insufficient for damage detection.
III.
THE BRILLOUIN OPTICAL CORRELATION ANALYSIS
(BOCDA) TECHNIQUE
Distributed strain sensing based on fiber Brillouin
scattering is a promising technique as a fiber optic nerve.
Brillouin scattering has about 11GHz down-shifted frequency
compared with an input lightwave. The frequency shift is
changed with longitudinal strain applied to the fiber.
Techniques for distribution sensing developed so far, however,
have a lack in the spatial resolution. Since the typical Brillouin
gain spectrum (BGS) width is 30MHz, spectral width of
sensing lightwave should be less than 30MHz to keep the strain
sensitivity. Therefore, the practical limitation of the spatial
resolution in the pulse-based time domain techniques turns out
to be 1m. Additionally, the pulse-based systems require several
minutes of measurement time, because the scattered power in a
single pulse is quite tiny.
To improve the resolution and the sampling rate, a
technique, Brillouin Optical Correlation Domain Analysis;
BOCDAhad been developed. It is based on controlling the
correlation between the pump and probe continuous
lightwaves, which excite the Stimulated Brillouin Scattering
(SBS). Figure 1 shows the system. One output of the coupler,
serving as the pump, is launched into the fiber under test. The
other output is modulated by an EOM with a microwave
frequency v, so that sidebands are generated around the
incident lightwave of a frequency 0. The first lower sideband
at 0-v, serving as the probe, propagates against the pump in
the fiber and reached the detector.
profiles were measured along the concrete specimen using the
BOCDA system with a 2-cm spatial resolution, as the concrete
specimen was progressively pulled. The strain profiles are
shown, corresponding to the crack widths, in Fig. 5. A small
crack width less than 0.1mm can be recognized through the
strain distribution change.
Figure 1. The BOCDA system
It is the point in the system that the pump and the probe are
identically frequency-modulated at the LD. As a result, SBS
occurs exclusively at the correlation peak position, where the
two lightwaves are highly correlated. As shown in Fig.2, only
at the correlation peak position, Lorentz-shaped spectrum can
be obtained. Then, at the fiber end, the spectrum shown at the
left in Fig.2 is obtained, whose peak frequency corresponds to
that at the correlation peak position. The peak position can be
sshifted along the fiber by simply changing the FM frequency
m
to
obtain
the
BGS
distribution.
Figure 3 shows an example of the output of the system, where
strain was applied at a 3cm section along the fiber.
Figure 4. Photo of concrete specimen
Figure 2. Position-selective excitation of stimulated Brillouin
scattering.
Figure 5. The strain profile
V.
CONCLUSION
In summary, this research has improved the sensing technique
and produced fiber-optic nerve system with higher spatial
resolution. This research already achieved a spatial resolution
of 1cm and these values are 100 times and 104 times higher
than conventional values. This function obtained by using the
continuous wave technique rather than the pulse lightwave
technique.
Figure 3. Example of an output system
IV.
THE EXPERIMENT
Figure 4 shows a photograph taken under preparation of a
concrete specimen for crack detection experiments with an
embedded fiber using the BOCDA system. The 20-cm
concrete specimen was pulled to generate a crack at an
interface made in two stage concrete casting. Distributed strain
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Special thanks to Prof Dr Abu Bakar for giving the
opportunity to write this paper, to research group lead by
Kazuo Hotate for giving a lot of knowledge on the latest
techniques and fellow friends.
REFERENCES
[1]
Shoichi Sudo and Katsunari Okamoto, New Photonics Technologies for
The Information Age, Artech House INC. London April 2004.
[2]
[3]
Joseph C. Palais, Fiber Optic Communications, Fifth Edition,
Pearson.Prentice Hall, 2005.
Kazuo Hotate, The BOCDA Technique, unpublished.
