Space-Rated, Rugged, Compact and Inexpensive Fiber Sensor Interrogator

Fiber optic sensing (FOS) technology is continuously being developed and offers many advantages over other traditional sensing technologies. The fiber sensors are compact, flexible, lightweight, and immune to electromagnetic interference. For optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR) interrogation, thousands of Fiber Bragg gratings can be continuously spaced along the length of the fiber to allow for simultaneous measurements of temperature and strain with high spatial resolution. However interrogators implementing OFDR remain costly and are still economically difficult to justify for broad deployment. For this reason, Sensuron is excited to collaborate with NASA in this program to develop and create the technology needed to drive down the cost of this sensing solution and produce a ruggedized low SWAP-C FOS system that will be applicable to temperature and liquid level monitoring applications. The resulting product will be designed to meet harsh environmental specifications for radiation, temperature, shock amp; vibration as well as humidity. It will be capable of deployment in space missions but its commercial use will be most prevalent across many earth-bound applications.