Structural Health Monitoring Using Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor Matrix

Fiber Bragg Grating had been identified as very important elements, especially for strain measurements in smart structures. In many applications, arrays of FBG sensors along a single fiber at multiple locations are required to collect data samples at high speed with microstrain resolution. However, the traditional approaches based spectrum scanning and Wavelength Division Multiplexing are either lacking in sampling rates due to scanning and processing speed or cost prohibiting, respectively, as the number of optical sensors increased. The technique IFOS is proposing is based on the combination of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Frequency Modulation (FM) techniques. In addition, IFOS will implement multi-fiber multiplexability to the present high-speed WDM systems with Space Division Multiplexing scheme to increase the number of sensor array based on fast optical switch. These approaches will have advantages over scanning systems as well as WDM based in terms of speed and the capability of multiplexing FBG sensors at lower cost. Potential implementation of proposed technique and high-speed FBG sensors in structure health monitoring and intelligent sensing will be demonstrated, in collaboration with the research team at the University of Akron.