Sagnac fiber interferometer with the population grating for fiber Bragg grating dynamic strain sensing

A Sagnac fiber interferometer with the population grating formed in saturable erbium-doped fiber (EDF) for fiber Bragg grating (FBG) dynamic strain sensing is proposed. In this configuration, a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA)-based fiber ring laser with an FBG reflector is employed in the sensing part and a Sagnac interferometer based on transient two-wave mixing (TWM) via dynamic population gratings in single-mode polarization maintaining erbium-doped fiber (PM-EDF) is used in this detecting part. Experimental results show that the Sagnac fiber interferometer detection system can stably respond to dynamic strains at high frequencies. As an example of application, the response of the sensor system to continuous sinusoidal ultrasonic signals is presented. The proposed simple and robust configuration has an all-fiber design based on commercially available elements, which makes it promising for applications in fiber optic ultrasonic sensors.