An improved sensitivity normalization technique of PGC demodulation with low minimum phase detection sensitivity using laser modulation to generate carrier signal

Abstract The phase carrier signal of the PGC demodulation in fiber optic interferometric sensors (FOIS) may be generated by using laser current modulation to achieve all-fiber structures in long-distance and outdoor applications. An optical intensity modulation with carrier frequency induced from the laser modulation will cause the instability and distortion in the PGC demodulation output. Additionally, since the optical intensity attenuation of the FOIS will degrade the PGC demodulation output, proper sensitivity compensation on the PGC demodulator is necessary for the field applications. In this paper, we propose an improved technique by using a balanced photoreceiver in the FOIS to attain significant improvements in the instability and distortion of the PGC demodulation output. Moreover, we choose a small phase scrambler signal amplitude of 1 rad to achieve improved the minimum phase detection sensitivity (MPDS) as well as sensitivity normalization because the improvement of the MPDS is very important to the advanced FOIS. The experimental results show that the improved values of the best MPDS are 5.7 dB (for DFB laser diode) and 4.3 dB (for EP1550 laser diode), respectively, by using the improved technique. From the sensitivity normalization experiment results, the relative error is shown to be less than 0.5% when the optical intensity attentuation is no more than 15 dB. It verifies the effectiveness of the sensitivity normalization technique proposed in our improved PGC demodulation system.