Optical signal processing for fiber Bragg grating based wear sensors

Abstract In this study, we propose a simplified signal processing scheme for fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based wearsensing. Instead of using a chirped FBG and detecting the bandwidth, we use uniform gratings as sensors andmeasure the optical power reflected by the sensing grating to determine the length of the sensor grating,hence detect the wear. We demonstrate by the experiments that the proposed method is feasible andpractical. The advantage of the proposed method lies in the fact that structure of the wear sensing system issimplified and therefore the cost can be significantly reduced. The principle of the proposed method, thedesign of the wear sensor, and the experiments are described. Publication Details This paper originally appeared as: Li, E, Xi, J & Chicharo, J, Optical signal processing for fiber Bragg gratingbased wear sensors, Proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Signal Processing and ItsApplications, 28-31 August 2005, vol 2, 867-870. Copyright IEEE 2005.