This PDF file contains the front matter associated with SPIE Proceedings Volume 9620 including the Title Page, Copyright information, Table of Contents, Introduction, and Conference Committee listing.

A polarization optical time-domain reflectometer (POTDR) can distributedly measure the vibration of fiber by detecting the vibration induced polarization variation only with a polarization analyzer. It has great potential in the monitoring of the border intrusion, structural healthy, anti-stealing of pipeline and so on, because of its simple configuration, fast response speed and distributed measuring ability. However, it is difficult to distinguish two vibrations with the same frequency for POTDR because the signal induced by the first vibration would bury the other vibration induced signal. This paper proposes a simple method to resolve this problem in POTDR by analyzing the phase of the vibration induced signal. The effectiveness of this method in distinguishing two vibrations with the same frequency for POTDR is proved by simulation.

Phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) has been widely used in various applications for its distributed measurement capability of dynamic disturbance along the entire length of sensing fiber. In our previous research, the capacity of Φ-OTDR sensing system has been enhanced with ultra-weak fiber Bragg grating (UWFBG) array for high-precision quantitative measurement on the external disturbance. Multipoint nε level dynamic strain variation has been fully captured with 2m spatial resolution. However, only 5 identical UWFBGs were used in the demonstration. For large-scale sensing network, the detectable fiber length would be limited by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the dynamic range of the reflection signal. In this paper, the performance limit of the UWFGB array enhanced Φ-OTDR sensing system has been investigated. A numerical simulation was performed to illustrate the relationships between the SNR, sensing length, spatial resolution and the UWFBG reflectivity. The simulation results have shown that when the reflectivity is relatively low, the noise is mainly contributed from Rayleigh scattering. On the other hand, the multiple reflections will dominate the overall noise characteristic with the growing of UWFBG reflectivity. The requirement of detection dynamic range was also analyzed. Simulation has shown that lower UWFBG reflectivity will lead to smaller signal dynamic range, making the selection of detector more practicable. The analysis result is quite useful for designing large-scale sensing network based on UWFGB array enhanced Φ-OTDR sensing system in practical situation.

A novel temperature sensor based on injection fiber Bragg grating laser with wavelength and temporal domain demodulation is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. The proof of concept device consists of a DFB laser modulated by a RF signal as injection light, a fiber Bragg grating laser, an optical spectrum analyzer, and a digital oscilloscope. The dynamic range of the proposed sensor is explored. The results demonstrate the new concept of temperature sensors and the technical feasibility for temperature measurement.

In this paper, we present a novel fiber-optic open-cavity Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI), which is specially designed for microfluidic refractive index (RI) sensing. An etching Side-hole fiber (SHF) was sandwiched between in two single-mode-fibers (SMF) and then a cavity was opened up by chemical etching method in the SHF. The minute order of the etching process endow such FPIs with low cost and ease of fabrication. For further microfluidic sensing test, the FPI was integrated with a cross microfluidic slit that was fabricated through photolithography. The refractive index response of the FPI was characterized using sodium hydroxide solution with RI range from 1.3400 to 1.3470. Experimental results show that FPIs with different length of open-cavity have the similar liner RI response with different RI sensitivities. The optimal RI sensitivity of more than 1138 nm/RI can be achieved with open-cavity length of 56 μm. The temperature response was also investigated, which shows that FPIs exhibit a very low temperature cross-sensitivities of 4.00 pm/ °C and 1.95 pm/ °C corresponding FPIs with cavity length of 123 μm and 56 μm, respectively. Such good performance renders the FPI a promising in-line microfluidic sensor for temperature-insensitive RI sensing.

An in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer temperature sensor is proposed based on cladding-etched quartz specialty fiber. For different etching depth for the outer cladding of quartz specialty fiber, the relationship between transmission spectrum and temperature is analyzed, respectively. Experimental results show that the interference spectrums shift with the temperature changing. The peaks and valleys of spectrum have a red shift as temperature increasing. The temperature sensitivity can be up to 62.89pm/°C in 25-90°C. Thus, this temperature sensor is low-cost, easy to be fabricated and high sensitivity, so it can be used in industrial production, biomedicine, aerospace and power electronics.

In this paper, a novel optical fiber sensor based on an enlarged-taper tailored fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for the measurement of relative humidity. The enlarged-taper works as a multifunctional joint that not only excites cladding modes but also recouples the cladding modes reflected by the FBG back into the leading single mode fiber. Due to the fact that cladding modes have a strong evanescent field penetrating into the ambient medium, the intensity of the reflected cladding modes is greatly influenced by the refractive index (RI) of the ambient medium. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) film is plated on the fiber surface by dip-coating technique, as a humidity-to-refractive index transducer, whose RI variance from 1.49 to 1.34 when the ambient humidity increases from 20%RH to 95%RH. The relative humidity response of the sensing structure is investigated in our home-made humidity chamber with a commercial hygrometer. By monitoring the intensity of the reflected cladding modes, the RH variance can be demodulated. Experimental results show that RH sensitivity depends on the RH value, and a sensitivity up to 1.2 dB/%RH can be achieved within the RH range of 30-90%. A fast and reversible time response has also been investigated. Such a probe-type and reusable fiber-optic RH sensor is a very promising technology for biochemical sensing applications, e.g., breath analysis, chemical reaction monitoring.

We investigate the performance of a fiber-optic strain sensor based on the nonlinear process Four-Wave Mixing. This simple device of only a microfiber has the merits of easy coupling, low loss and relatively pure mode to be applied in the fiber network. And microfiber-structure renders the sensor with small size and relatively large nonlinear coefficient. The strain-induced shift of both the signal and idler peaks are large enough to be detected. According to calculated results in this paper, the shift range increases with the decease of the microfiber’s diameter and the increase of strain on the fiber until a critical value. We presented the trends in a figure, and found the maximum shift is at 59.51 nm when we adjusted the diameter within strain of 30mε, and the high strain sensitivity of 2 pm/με is achieved when we set the pumping wavelength at 1550nm, peak power at 100 W. This strain sensor has high sensitivity, light and portable performance which has wide applications, such as mechanical detection or fault diagnosis in auto, aircraft, navigation. Moreover, large strain-induced shift could be applies to a number of wavelength selected devices, for example, a tunable laser or a wavelength-tuning entangled photon source which is significant in quantum information process.

Speckle patterns to be observed in an output light spot from an optical fiber are known to be changed due to external disturbances applied onto the optical fiber. In order to investigate possibilities of utilizing such changes in speckle patterns for sensing application, a certain load was applied onto a jacket-covered communication-grade multi-mode glass optical fiber through which laser beams emitted from a laser diode were propagating, and observed changes in speckle patterns in the output light spot from the optical fiber were investigated both as image data via a CCD camera and as an output voltage from a photovoltaic panel irradiated with the output light spot. The load was applied via a load application mechanism in which several ridges were provided onto opposite flat plates and a certain number of weights were placed there so that corrugated bending of the optical fiber was intentionally induced via load application due to the ridges. The obtained results showed that the number of speckles in the observed pattern in the output light spot as well as the output voltage from the photovoltaic panel irradiated with the output light spot showed decreases upon load application with relatively satisfactory repeatability. When the load was reduced, i.e., the weights were removed, the number of speckles then showed recovery. These results indicate there is a certain possibility of utilizing changes in speckle patterns for sensing of load application onto the optical fiber.

Since it first appeared in iPhone 5S in 2013, fingerprint identification (ID) has rapidly gained popularity among consumers. Current fingerprint-enabled smartphones unanimously consists of a discrete sensor to perform fingerprint ID. This architecture not only incurs higher material and manufacturing cost, but also provides only static identification and limited authentication. Hence as the demand for a thinner, lighter, and more secure handset grows, we propose a novel pixel architecture that is a photosensitive device embedded in a display pixel and detects the reflected light from the finger touch for high resolution, high fidelity and dynamic biometrics. To this purpose, an amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) dual-gate photo TFT working in both fingerprint-imaging mode and display-driving mode will be developed.

Traditional video imagers require high-speed CCD, we present a new method to implement video imagers with low speed CCD detector imager system based on video compressed. Using low speed CCD detector and transmissive liquid crystal (LC) instead of high speed CCD to get data cube; by the method of data processing method , we make high precision reconstruction of compressed video data, theoretical analysis and experimental result show that it is not ensures the video imaging quality but also reduced the frame rate of the detectors and complexity of video imaging system greatly.

The summary of hyperspectral polarization remote sensing detection is presented, including the characteristics and mechanism of polarization detection, the expression of polarization light and the detection method. The present research of hyperspectral polarization remote sensing is introduced. A novel method of hyperspectral polarization imaging technique is discussed, which is based on static modulation adding with the double refraction crystal. The static modulation is composed of one polarizer and two retarders. The double refraction crystal is used to generate interference image. The four Stokes vectors and spectral information can be detected only by one measurement. The method of static modulation is introduced in detail and is simulated by computer. The experimental system is also established in laboratory. The basic concept of the technique is verified. The simulation error of DOP (polarization degree detection) is about 1%. The experimental error of DOP is less than 5%. The merits of the novel system are no moving parts, compactness and no electrical element.

The high air-tightness multicore fiber optic penetration connector is a core component for the optical fiber sensing and communication technologies applied in the space environment simulator under the vacuum thermal environment. High air-tightness and insertion loss are the two key indexes of the fiber optic penetration connector. The air-tightness and insertion loss on-line synchronous detection method was proposed. First, established hardware-in-the-loop testing platform by using the vacuum pumping system, the vacuum vessel, the helium mass spectrometer leak detector and optical time-domain reflectmeter, then, described the air tightness and insertion loss on-line detection principle, finally, designed a detection test scheme and air-tightness and insertion loss were tested. Experimental results indicate that the leakage rate is lower than 1.0×10^-7Pa•L/S, the minimum of which is1.0×10^-10Pa•L/S and the insertion loss at wave length window 1550 nm is ±0.07db, which is less than ±0.1db. It can lay the data basis for the design of opto-mechanical combination and later period fine processing.

In recent years heart and blood vessel diseases kill more people than everything else combined. The daily test of heart rate for the prevention and treatment of the heart head blood-vessel disease has the vital significance. In order to adapt the transformation of medical model and solve the low accuracy problem of the traditional method of heart rate measuring, we present a new method to monitor heart rate in this paper. The heart rate detection is designed for daily heart rate detection .The heart rate signal is collected by the heart rate sensor. The signal through signal processing circuits converts into sine wave and square wave in turn. And then the signal is transmitted to the computer by data collection card. Finally, we use LABVIEW and MATLAB to show the heart rate wave and calculate the heart rate. By doing contrast experiment with medical heart rate product, experimental results show that the system can realize rapidly and accurately measure the heart rate value. A measurement can be completed within 10 seconds and the error is less than 3beat/min. And the result shows that the method in this paper has a strong anti-interference ability. It can effectively suppress the movement interference. Beyond that the result is insensitive to light.

Quartz-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) sensors involves with many desirable features, such as being small and portable, with fast continuous in situ measurements possible. In QEPAS systems, reference cells filled with gas mixtures for wavelength locking and calibration are used to improve the precision and stability of the trace gas concentration measurement. For this study, a 5 m length hollow core photonic bandgap fiber (HC-PBF) splicing with single mode fibers at two ends was manufactured as reference cell, which has long absorption path, low transmission loss and easy connectivity. Hollow cores under high pressure (3.0 × 10⁵ Pa) were filled with a certified mixture of ammonia and nitrogen gas to reach equilibrium rapidly. The experiment results indicated that absorption spectra of reference cell with a low loss <3.5dB maintained stable after 150 days at atmosphere. For trace gas detection, 1.531 μm DFB laser with wavelength modulation technique was demonstrated based on QEPAS. A normalized noise equivalent absorption coefficient (NNEA) of 1.18×10^-7 cm^-1W/√Hz was obtained at room temperature and pressure of 760 Torr. This results in a minimum detection limit of 3.6ppm for noise equivalent concentration within a 1s lock in integration time.

We present a Fabry-Perot interferometer for microfluidic flow rate sensing. The FPI was composed by a pair of fiber Bragg grating reflectors and a micro Co²⁺-doped optical fiber cavity, acting as a “hot-wire” sensor. A microfluidic channel made from commercial silica capillary was integrated with the FPIs on a chip to realize flow-rate sensing system. By utilizing a tunable pump laser with wavelength of 1480 nm, the proposed flowmeter was experimentally demonstrated. The flow rate of the liquid sample is determined by the induced resonance wavelength shift of the FPI. The effect of the pump power on the performance of our flowmeter was investigated. The dynamic response was also measured under different flow-rate conditions. The experimental results achieve a sensitivity of 70 pm/(μL/s), a dynamic range up to 1.1 μL/s and response time in the level of seconds. Such good performance renders the sensor a promising supplementary component in microfluidic biochemical sensing system.

A novel current measuring method based on the magnetic controllable refractive index characteristic of magnetic fluid and fiber optic Fabry-Perot (F-P) interferometer is proposed and demonstrated. A current sensing probe composed of fiber optic F-P interferometer filled with magnetic fluid (MF) is analyzed theoretically and numerically. Based on the theoretical analysis and numerical simulation results, the structure of the fiber optic F-P current sensor is designed and fabricated experimentally. The relationship of the magnetic fluid at various magnetic field is measured experimentally and the numerical model of relationship between the refractive index of magnetic fluid and the characteristics of F-P current sensor is built up. The sensor has the advantages of simple structure, low cost, and high magnetic field measurement sensitivity. A high magnetic field measurement sensitivity of 0.034 nm/Gs is achieved with the magnetic field varied from 0 to 391.5Gs, and the experiment results are consistent with the theoretical analysis and numerical simulation.

In this paper, a dual-parameter measurement scheme based on an etched thin core fiber modal interferometer (TCMI) cascaded with a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for simultaneous measurement of magnetic field and temperature. The magnetic fluid cladding surrounding the TCFMI was used as a magnetic field-to-refractive index transducer. To depress the temperature influence on the performance of such sensors, an FBG was inscribed in the leading SMF of the TCFMI. Experimental results show that, the reflection of the FBG has a magnetic field intensity and temperature sensitivities of -0.017 dB/Oe and 0.133 dB/℃, respectively, while the Bragg wavelength of the FBG only has a temperature sensitivity of 13.23 pm/℃. By monitoring the reflection wavelength and intensity of the Bragg mode, the intensity of the magnetic field and the temperature variance can be measured, which enables magnetic field sensing under strict temperature environments. Meanwhile the reflective sensing probe is more compact and practical for applications in hard-to-reach conditions.

The resonance frequency of plasmonic nanoparticles can be altered by a minute change of their local refractive index, making them a great tool for bio-sensing. In this work, we investigate the sensitivity of plasmonic naonsensors in theory. By treating plasmonic nanoparticles as nanocavities, we solve the eigenmodes (i.e., the plasmonic resonance modes) of the system, calculate the analyte-induced resonance frequency shifts using the perturbation theory, and obtain explicit formulas for the spectral sensitivity of plasmonic naonsensors in three major different types of sensing experiments, namely, single molecule detection, thin absorption layer sensing, and index sensing of bulk solutions. In the single molecule case, a linear relation is found between the spectral sensitivity and the local intensity of electric fields. When analytes form a thin layer on a plasmonic nanosensor, the induced resonance shift is proportional to the integral of the intensity of local fields over the covered area. When the analytes are homogenously distributed in the surrounding medium, the index-change-induced spectral change is, however, only decided by the material property of the nanocavity independent with the local fields. We compared the theory with both numerical results and previously reported experimental results, and good agreements are found. This work provides explicit guidelines for designing high-performance sensing system for a broad range of applications.

Space optical communication technique is attracting increasingly more attention because it owns advantages such as high security and great communication quality compared with microwave communication. As the space optical communication develops, people have already achieved the communication at data rate of Gb/s currently. The next generation for space optical system have goal of the higher data rate of 40Gb/s. However, the traditional optical communication system cannot satisfy it when the data rate of system is at such high extent. This paper will introduce ground optical communication system of 40Gb/s data rate as to achieve the space optical communication at high data rate. Speaking of the data rate of 40Gb/s, we must apply waveguide modulator to modulate the optical signal and magnify this signal by laser amplifier. Moreover, the more sensitive avalanche photodiode (APD) will be as the detector to increase the communication quality. Based on communication system above, we analyze character of communication quality in downlink of space optical communication system when data rate is at the level of 40Gb/s. The bit error rate (BER) performance, an important factor to justify communication quality, versus some parameter ratios is discussed. From results, there exists optimum ratio of gain factor and divergence angle, which shows the best BER performance. We can also increase ratio of receiving diameter and divergence angle for better communication quality. These results can be helpful to comprehend the character of optical communication system at high data rate and contribute to the system design.

In this article, we review our recent progress on the development of a multifunctional optical system-on-a-chip platform, which can be used for achieving heterogeneous wireless fiber optical sensor networks. A multifunctional optical sensor platform based on the micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology is developed. The key component of the multifunctional optical sensor platform is a MEMS based tunable Fabry-Pérot (FP) filter, which can be used as a phase modulator or a wavelength tuning device in a multifunctional optical sensing system. Mechanics model of the FP filter and optics model of the multifunctional optical sensing system are developed to facilitate the design of the filter. The MEMS FP filter is implemented in a multifunctional optical sensing system including both Fabry-Perot interferometer based sensors and Fiber Bragg grating sensors. The experimental results indicate that this large dynamic range tunable filter can enable high performance heterogeneous optical sensing for many applications.

On different degrees of desertification land, there exists different vegetation communities, and spatial structure differences are obvious among different vegetation communities. This study implemented variogram calculation using typical sample selected from the image, adopting a common global optimization method to fit them into the spherical model. The results showed that the difference is obvious among different vegetation communities for the sill and range, such as, the sill and range are smaller for sample variogram of Artemisia halodendron and Salix flavida community than that of Artemisia halodendron and Caragana microphylla community, and the range for sample variogram of Agriophyllum arenarium community is bigger than that of Artemisia halodendron and Salix flavida community, but smaller than that of Artemisia halodendron and Caragana microphylla community. Incorporating the difference of the spatial structure characterization into the vegetation classification can improve sample separation, thereby increasing the overall classification accuracy.

We propose an optical-fiber-sensing-network (OFSN) to allow hybrid fiber sensors working in the same network and it achieves self-healing function. The discrete and distributed optical fiber sensors can be connected in sub-layers of the network. WDM-OTDM technique is introduced to convert multi-wavelengths of light source into a specific arranged wavelength in each sub-layer. Thus every sub-layer can share the system spectrum resources, and sensing signals of each sub-layer are transmitted together in the backbone network. To achieve self-healing function, double-ring structure is adopted in the backbone network. Node microprocessor program is designed to make switching to the protect fiber when working fiber is broken. The experimental backbone setup of the network demonstrates the practical reliability and intelligence of the optical sensing network.

The absorption model plays an important role in the design of the microbolometer structure regarding the determination of the optimum thickness of the structure layers. Moreover, the infrared absorption depends on the wavelength of the radiation and the material properties. In this paper, we presented an Infrared absorption model with absorption coefficient of 96% at maximum absorption wavelength of 9.89μm which is very close to the expected value 10μm. This model was established by using MATLAB so that the simulation of the infrared absorption of the VOx microbolometer could be accomplished. In order to confirm the role of this modeling in the design of the device structure, comparison with other structures is also studied in this paper.

With the development of network information, the era of big data is coming, and this has high demand to the information quantity and the diversity of the remote sensing images. Currently the available remote sensing system focuses on the convenience and the celerity of the acquiring images, and lacking the remote sensing system which can acquire the image with the diversity and large amount of information. In this paper, a new small light multifunction integrated remote sensing and the remote sensing information network system of multi-sensor are proposed to meet the new developing requirements of the current network information. The small light multi-function integrated remote sensing system consists of a load platform, the integrated sensor system, the airborne control system, the stabilized platform, the transmission system and the ground processing system. The components, function and the principle of the system are introduced, and the key technologies of the integrated remote sensing system are analyzed, in the last the applications of the system are described in order to make a contribution to the industrialization of the big data remote sensing.

This paper reports a new optical fiber accelerometer which is suitable for heterodyne demodulation method. Dual low reflectivity polarization-maintaining FBG is used to form the interferometer inside accelerometer, simplify the structure of traditional interferometer and eliminate polarization fading. The resonance frequency and the sensitivity of the accelerometer are predicted by using micro-element analysis. The experimental results showed that the accelerometer’s sensitivity is more than 40 dB re rad/g, and the bandwidth is wider than 1.2 kHz. This type of optical fiber accelerometer can be widely used in acceleration sensing system which requires both high sensitivity and wide bandwidth.

We demonstrate a hybrid sensing scheme, combining the incoherent optical frequency domain reflectometry (IOFDR) based Raman distributed temperature sensor (DTS) with the extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (EFPI) based pressure sensor, for down-hole monitoring. The pressure measurement is compensated by a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based temperature sensor. By using a laser diode as the common light source, a hybrid Raman/EFPI/FBG sensing system has been developed with a single fiber. The stimulated emission light and the spontaneous emission light of the laser diode are used for DTS and EFPI-FBG interrogations respectively. There can be no overlap between the spectral range of the Raman backscattered light and the spectral range of the reflected light from the EFPI-FBG sensor. Distributed temperature and pressure can thus be measured by using wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) technology. Experimental results show that, both the distributed temperature and the key-point pressure can be measured alternatively with little interference.

In this paper, we present an improved fixed phased demodulation method combined with phase generated carrier (PGC) and ellipse fitting algorithm (EFA) to enhance the phase resolution and suppress the total harmonic distortion (THD) caused by the laser intensity disturbance (LID) of modulation phase. We make the subtraction operation to the outputs of the two 1×2 couplers to get the differential signals without DC offset, which is used to achieve the fixed phase demodulation. The EFA is applied to construct the standard quadrature signals with the two signals. The last output is utilized to finish the small amplitude (<2π rad) demodulation in PGC method, which can increase the phase resolution. The distortion signals caused by the LID effect can be eliminated by the EFA. According to the result, the phase error of the EFA is 0.03rad, the amplitude error is 5% and the phase resolution of system is 2.0×10^-6rad/√Hz@1kHz (-106.3dB) with the THD is 5%.

We have designed a novel evanescent field fiber optic biosensors with porous silicon dioxide cladding. The pore size of porous silicon dioxide cladding is about 100 nm in diameter. Biological molecules were immobilized to the porous silicon dioxide cladding used APTES and glutaraldehyde. Refractive index of cladding used Bruggemann's effective medium theory. We carried out simulations of changing in light intensity in optical fiber before and after chemical coupling of biomolecules. This novel optical fiber evanescent wave biosensor has a great potential in clinical chemistry for rapid and convenient determination of biological molecule.

We report on two-dimensional (2D) numerical simulations of photoresponse characteristics for GaN based p-i-n ultraviolet (UV) photodetectors. Effects of doping density of p-GaN layer on the photoresponse have been investigated. In order to accurately simulate the device performance, the theoretical calculation includes doping-dependent mobility degradation by Arora model and high field saturation model. Theoretical modeling shows that the doping density of p- GaN layer can significantly affect the photoresponse of GaN based p-i-n UV photodetectors, especially at schottky contact. We have to make a suitable choice of the doping in the device design according to the simulation results.

Thermal infrared radiometers play a vital role in obtaining information in field measurements and also in verifying information from remote sensing satellite sensor data. However, the calibration precision of the thermal infrared radiometers directly affects the accuracy of the remote sensing data analysis and application. It is therefore necessary to ensure that the calibration of thermal infrared radiometers is of sufficient and reliable precision. In this paper, the theory of a six-band thermal infrared radiometer (CE 312-2 ASTER) calibration method was introduced, with the calibration being conducted by using a blackbody source in the laboratory. The sources of error during the calibration procedure were analyzed, and the results of the calibration were provided. Then, laboratory experiments using the radiometer were described. The measurements of the surface temperature of a water sample that was contained in a thermostatic water bath, performed by using the radiometer, were compared to the water sample’s temperature controlled by another device. These experiments were used to evaluate the calibration precision of the CE 312-2 ASTER radiometer, by means of assessing the measurement accuracy of the experiments. The results demonstrated that the calibration coefficients of the CE 312-2 ASTER thermal infrared radiometer displayed a very good performance, with highly accurate measurements, and could be used to detect phenomena related to a thermal infrared target.

Microchannel plate (MCP) is a photoelectron multiplier as the core component of low-level light (LLL) image intensifier. MCP has two-dimensional space, time, and energy resolution, fast response time, low background noise, wide dynamic range and high gain characteristics, as well as electrons, ions, UV and soft X-ray photon detection capability directly. In recent years, with the publication of foreign advanced technology and Chinese research staff in-depth understanding of MCP’s unique characteristics, the applications of MCP have extended into many new fields accordingly in China. In addition to the image intensifier, the MCP can be used in deep space exploration and scientific experiments, detecting kinds of trace rays and particles, such as pulsars navigation, nuclear simulation diagnostics, UV, EUV, neutron, neutrino detection and imaging. North Night Vision Technology Co. Ltd (NVT) as the only unit possessing MCP production capacity in China is constantly working on improving, innovation and application research on MCP technology. In this paper, based on the researches on MCP in some new fields the NVT Company has undertaken and ongoing, the technological breakthroughs and application research progresses achieved are described.

A fiber-optic extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometer (EFPI) and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based pressure sensor system is designed. Using polyimide coated optical fiber, this sensor works in harsh environment of high temperature and high pressure such as oilfield application with the advantages of high sensitivity, quick response and good reliability. Experiments show the sensor system has a pressure accuracy of 0.05MPa over a range of 0.1MPa to 60MPa at room temperature and in the mixed environment of high temperature and high pressure, the pressure accuracy gets to 0.07MPa under the experimental condition.

The thermo-optic coefficient of standard single mode fiber (SMF) is researched in the temperature range from 20 to 1000 °C by using a fiber-optic intrinsic Fabry-Pérot interferometer. Polynomial fit of the interference fringe shift indicates that the thermo-optic coefficient increases with temperature, and is estimated to reach its peak at ~1144 °C. The error of the temperature measurements is also analyzed when taking the thermo-optic coefficient value as a constant.

FBG is a kind of promising high precision strain sensor, and it can not only detect the homogeneous strain, but also identify non-uniform strain distribution. In the application of FBG in inhomogeneous strain sensing, genetic algorithm is an important method to reconstruct the non-uniform strain from reflection spectra of FBG. However, the practical reconstruction of genetic algorithm demonstrates its shortcomings such as low computational efficiency, easily falling into local optimal solution, etc , and it is well known that there is a great relationship between computational efficiency and population initialization of genetic algorithm. In general genetic algorithm employed in FBG strain reconstruction, the initialized population is randomly distributed strain along FBG axial direction, which ignores the continuity between neighbor strains. To reduce the number of population parameters and make the original population more close to the real strain distribution, a new method of population initialization is proposed here, that is using polynomial function parameters to be the initialized population instead of the randomly distributed strain, supposed that the FBG axial strains can be described as a polynomial function with independent variable of axial position. In simulation experiments, the reflection spectrums of a 10mm-long FBG are obtained from T-Matrix method in four cases of strain-free, linear-distributed strain, parabola-distributed strain and exponential –distributed strain, and then the general genetic algorithm and the new genetic algorithm with simplified population initialization were applied to reconstruct the strain distribution from the reflection spectrums respectively. The experiment results verify the supposition of the polynomial function of the FBG, and show clearly that the new method can improve the computational efficiency of genetic algorithm in FBG inhomogeneous strain demodulation greatly. From the results, it is found that with the same calculation accuracy, the computing time of the new population initialization method is reduced to about 1/5 of the general on average.

A positioning algorithm for two-wavelength dual Mach-Zehnder interferometry (TDMZI) vibration sensing system is proposed. We employ the reciprocal of the interval between neighboring zero-crossing (NZC) points to represent the frequency distribution of the interference signal in time domain. Meanwhile, these reciprocal points are used to fit a curve and we use cross correlation to estimate the time delay of the two fitted curves. Finally we analysis the positioning error caused by the proposed positioning algorithm and experimentally demonstrate that the algorithm can be used to locating with positioning error of ±50m. This algorithm has a promising potential in long distance two-wavelength vibration sensing system.

A novel method to auto-correct the fluctuation of calibration in Raman distributed temperature sensor is proposed in this paper. The proposed scheme combines a fiber coil configuration with a Pt-resistance in the front section to cancel out the impact of fluctuation generated by perturbations of the laser and APD, instability of power supply and environment temperature changes. The sensor performance is significantly improved by exploiting the fiber coil and Pt-resistance to correct the temperature calibration. Our theoretical analysis shows that with the calibration of temperature autocorrection method the sensing system is more suitable for various environments and provides low uncertainty in long term operation, and it has the potential to accurate temperature calibration with simple equipment and to reduce costs of the system.

Monitoring corrosion of steel reinforcing bars is critical for the durability and safety of reinforced concrete structures. Corrosion sensors based on fiber optic have proved to exhibit meaningful benefits compared with the conventional electric ones. In recent years, Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) has been used as a new kind of sensing element in an attempt to directly monitor the corrosion in concrete structure due to its remarkable advantages. In this paper, we present a novel kind of FBG based rebar corrosion monitoring sensor. The rebar corrosion is detected by volume expansion of the corroded rebar by transferring it to the axial strain of FBG when concrete structure is soaked in salt water. An accelerated salt water corrosion test was performed. The experiment results showed the corrosion can be monitored effectively and the corrosion rate is obtained by volume loss rate of rebar.

Magneto-optical fiber plays an important role in magneto-optical devices. The fiber has larger Verdet constant will lead to a larger Faraday rotation per unit length fiber and applied field. In order to increase the magneto-optical characteristic, especially the Verdet constant of photonic crystal fiber, a magneto-optical fiber device based on combination of the magnetic fluid and the tunable photonic bandgap effect of photonic crystal fiber is proposed. The magnetic fluid is filled into the air holes of the cladding layer in the photonic crystal fiber using a new air pressure-filled method. Because the magnetic fluid prepared in this experiment has higher refractive index (>1.45), and is filled into the air-holes of photonic crystal fiber, as a result, the index guiding fiber is converted into photonic bandgap fiber. A magneto-optic system based on the Stokes polarization parameters method is designed which could analyze the Faraday effect. The corresponding Faraday rotation could be measured in the external magnetic field with different magnetic intensity by this magneto-optic system. The Faraday rotation of the photonic crystal fiber filled with magnetic fluid is approximately 5 times than that of the single mode optical fiber. The proposed magneto-optical fiber device takes full advantage of the ultrahigh sensitivity characteristic of photonic bandgap fiber and the large Verdet constant of magneto-optical fiber, can be used for high sensitive magnetic field sensor, magneto-optical switch, and magneto-optical modulator, etc.

The optimization of buffer gas pressure is very important to improve the performance of the rubidium (Rb) atomic magnetometer. In this paper we briefly introduce the basic principle and the experimental method of the rubidium magnetometer based on Faraday rotation effect, and describe the factors affecting the magnetometer sensitivity, then analyze and summarize the mechanism of the influence of spin-exchange, spin-destruction collisions, radiation trapping and the spin diffusion on spin relaxation of Rb atoms. Based on this, the relationship between the rubidium magnetometer sensitivity, the spin relaxation rate and the gas chamber conditions (buffer gas pressure, the bubble radius, measuring temperature) is established. Doing calculations by the simulation software, how the magnetometer sensitivity and the relaxation rate vary with the gas chamber conditions can be seen; finally, the optimal values of the buffer gas pressure under certain gas chamber conditions are obtained. The work is significant for the engineering development of rubidium magnetometer.

The phase grating wavefront curvature sensor based on liquid crystal spatial light modulator is introduced. A close-loop phase retrieval method based on Eigen functions of Laplacian is proposed, and its accuracy and efficiency are analyzed through numerical experiments of atmospheric phase retrieval. The results show that the close-loop phase retrieval method has a high accuracy. Moreover, it is stable regardless of modal cross coupling.

Two 16-element fiber-optic seismometer arrays based on combined wavelength- and time domain multiplexing technology have been designed and investigated, followed by a field test, which is focused on the sensitivities of the sensors and correlation of the signal. The field test shows that the consistency of the sensitivities is pretty good, though the fluctuation of sensitivities at different frequencies should not be ignored. The method to calculate the correlation of two sensors is presented briefly and the results show an acceptable high level. The field test indicates that it’s available to use the arrays in practical applications of micro-seismic.

A novel demodulation method for weak signal of fiber sagnac interferometer is proposed, by which we obtained a simple long distance optical fiber sensor system with positioning accuracy less than 1 km. In our work, we expanded one channel of interference signal in a Taylor series, and the weak phase difference of interference signal could be obtained by a weak signal approximation theory from the Taylor series, then the approximate phase difference was used to demodulate the weak signal and locate the fiber vibration. By using the proposed method, there was no need to use phase amplification technology such as the phase generated carrier modulation or phase-locked amplification technology for weak signal demodulation, whereas, we just need one channel to demodulate the phase, therefore it simplified the system structure and demodulation algorithm, and cut down the cost. Based on this new demodulation theory, the strong signal could also be demodulated; it just need choose a weak part from the strong signal. This proposed method was demonstrated in a long-distance fiber sagnac interferometer sensor system with length of 50 km. The positioning accuracy was less than 1 km in the length of 10, 20, 30 and 40 km. We believe the accuracy could be enhanced with the help of signal processing technology such as signal filter and signal denoising.

Investigations of the corrosion of rebars in concrete structures are widely studied because of the serious damage to concrete caused by rebar corrosion. The rebar corrosion products in reinforced concrete take up 2~6 times the volume of the rebar. Based on this principle, a new type of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) corrosion sensor is proposed in this paper, which consists of two sensors, an FBG corrosion measurement sensor to measure the expansion strain caused by rebar corrosion, and a temperature compensation sensor to eliminate the cross-sensitivity of FBG corrosion sensor. The corrosion rate is derived by the wavelength shift of FBG corrosion sensor, so rebar corrosion can be monitored and assessed by the FBG wavelength shift. A customized rebar with epoxy fixing groove is designed to install a corrosion sensor on its surface and an embedded temperature compensation sensor. The corrosion sensor is embedded in cement mortar and subsequently casted in concrete. The performance of the corrosion sensor is studied in an accelerated electrochemical corrosion test. Experimental results show that the new type of corrosion sensor has advantage of relatively large measurement range of corrosion rate. The corrosion sensor is suitable to monitor slightly and moderately corroded rebars.

Edge detection is a crucial method for the location and quantity estimation of oil slick when oil spills on the sea. In this paper, we present a robust active contour edge detection algorithm for oil spill remote sensing images. In the proposed algorithm, we define a local Gaussian data fitting energy term with spatially varying means and variances, and this data fitting energy term is introduced into a global minimization active contour (GMAC) framework. The energy function minimization is achieved fast by a dual formulation of the weighted total variation norm. The proposed algorithm avoids the existence of local minima, does not require the definition of initial contour, and is robust to weak boundaries, high noise and severe intensity inhomogeneity exiting in oil slick remote sensing images. Furthermore, the edge detection of oil slick and the correction of intensity inhomogeneity are simultaneously achieved via the proposed algorithm. The experiment results have shown that a superior performance of proposed algorithm over state-of-the-art edge detection algorithms. In addition, the proposed algorithm can also deal with the special images with the object and background of the same intensity means but different variances.