Strain- and Temperature-Sensing Characteristics of Fiber Ring Laser Sensor With Cascaded Fabry-Perot Interferometer and FBG

The strain- and temperature-sensing characteristics of fiber ring laser (FRL) sensors are studied comprehensively. The reflected sensing head, made up of spheroidal Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) concatenated with fiber Bragg grating (FBG), is inserted in the cavity of FRL acting as the laser intensity modulator and wavelength selector. The laser intensity is sensitive to temperature change while insensitive to strain, making the dual-parameter demodulation realizable without multivariate matrix by detecting the laser wavelength shift and the laser intensity variation, for the first time in our best knowledge. The comparable sensitivities of 1 pm/ mu epsilon and 24.9 pm/degrees C are detected in experiment for strain and temperature, respectively, with low detection limit (DL) of 0.87 mu epsilon and 0.035 degrees C, high Q factor of 1140 and 7.07 x 10(5). The high intensity and narrow linewidth of the sensor make it potentially great for application in long-distance sensing systems.