Channel reduction schemes for fiber-optic angle encoders

Three fiber-optic sensor systems designed to remotely determine angular position that achieve high angular resolution with fewer channels than comparable Gray code encoders are described. Two of the Systems use a sheet polarizer affixed to a “codewheel” and the third system uses a two-channel digital shaft encoder style “codewheel.”

The first polarization scheme uses four optical channels, two of which are analog and two digital. The ratio of the two analog channel intensities yields tan²θ. The fourfold quadrant ambiguity is resolved by the two digital channels that are transected by two semicircular masks on the polarizer codewheel (Ref. U.S. Patent No. 4,577,414, 25 Mar 1986). The second polarization scheme again uses quadrant ambiguity masks but employs only one analog channel that simulates a polarization vector that oscillates through 90°. The oscillating vector is produced by the superposition of two sine-wave-modulated beams at the polarizer codewheel. The modulations of the two beams have a phase difference that is created by time delaying one of the beams in a fiber delay loop. The phase difference between the generated composite signal and a reference signal then determines the angle of the codewheel. We have demonstrated experimentally that this type of split analog-digital scheme has a resolution equivalent to a 10-bit digital system (i.e., ±0.35°) independent of codewheel diameter.

The serial digital shaft encoder scheme uses only two digital channels and a codewheel that has two concentric masks with 48 equally spaced windows offset with respect to each other by one-half window width. At 0° there is a unique mask that initializes an up/down decoder chip (Hewlett-Packard HCTL-2000). This system has a resolution better than 7 bits using a 5-cm diameter code wheel and 1-mm Selfoc^TM lenses.

The supporting electro-optical systems including sources, fibers, lenses, mirrors, couplers, WDMs, polarizers, detectors, and signal processing for all schemes are described and the relative merits of each are compared.     

Cross-phase modulation induced phase fluctuations in optical RZ pulse propagating in dispersion compensated WDM transmission systems

The basic mechanism of cross-phase modulation induced phase fluctuations in optical RZ pulse propagating in a periodically dispersion compensated transmission line has been investigated. Ordinary differential equations have been derived using variational analysis to estimate the phase fluctuation and the analytical result is verified by numerical simulations based on split-step Fourier method. We therefore explore the impact of different dispersion compensation maps on phase fluctuation for 10 Gb/s and 40 Gb/s WDM transmission systems. The effects of initial pulse spacing between channels, channel spacing and residual dispersion on phase shift have been studied. We find that cross-phase modulation induced phase fluctuation can be mitigated by proper adjustment of channel spacing and/or residual dispersion.     

Light intensity modulation fiber-optic sensor for curvature measurement

A light intensity modulation fiber-optic sensor, which can measure curvature directly, has been developed. It is suitable for the measurement of thin, embedded or highly flexible structures. An experimental analysis on the static and dynamic characteristics of sensor has been undertaken. The results show that the output voltage has polarity and a good linear relationship with curvature when the curvature radius is larger than 60 mm. The mathematical model relating the relative output loss, parameters of sensitive zone’s configuration (depth, number, height and half angle of tooth) and bending radius is described analytically based on the geometric optics. Curvature fiber-optic sensors can be used to build a quasi-distributed fiber-optic sensor system, which can measure curvature and torsion angle simultaneously.     

Asymmetrically Apodized Linearly Chirped Fiber Bragg Gratings for Efficient Pulse Compression

Asymmetrically apodized linearly chirped fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are shown to have highly linearized time-delay response. In simulations of a five-stage, 5-cm grating-based dispersion compensation system, asymmetrically apodized FBGs are shown to give over 60% reduction in the energy scattered from the main pulse body, 16 ps?60 ps pulses propagated over 800 km, as compared to a symmetrically apodized grating of similar length, strength, and bandwidth.     

An Efficient Dispersion Calculation Method for Axially Symmetric Optical Fibers

An efficient numerical modal calculation method for an axially symmetric optical fiber is presented using a numerical Galerkin's method. By decomposing the transverse electric field of a guided wave with Bessel functions of the first kind in cylindrical polar coordinates, we have shown that dispersion characteristics of an optical fiber can be obtained very easily. In order to illustrate the effectiveness of this suggested method, numerical examples are given for a step index fiber, a W-shape depressed inner cladding fiber, and a dispersion-flattened fiber.     

Optimal low-dispersion low-dissipation LBM schemes for computational aeroacoustics

Lattice Boltmzann Methods (LBM) have been proved to be very effective methods for computational aeroacoustics (CAA), which have been used to capture the dynamics of weak acoustic fluctuations. In this paper, we propose a strategy to reduce the dispersive and disspative errors of the two-dimensional (2D) multi-relaxation-time lattice Boltzmann method (MRT-LBM). By presenting an effective algorithm, we obtain a uniform form of the linearized Navier–Stokes equations corresponding to the MRT-LBM in wave-number space. Using the matrix perturbation theory and the equivalent modified equation approach for finite difference methods, we propose a class of minimization problems to optimize the free-parameters in the MRT-LBM. We obtain this way a dispersion-relation-preserving LBM (DRP-LBM) to circumvent the minimized dispersion error of the MRT-LBM. The dissipation relation precision is also improved. And the stability of the MRT-LBM with the small bulk viscosity is guaranteed. Von Neuman analysis of the linearized MRT-LBM is performed to validate the optimized dispersion/dissipation relations considering monochromatic wave solutions. Meanwhile, dispersion and dissipation errors of the optimized MRT-LBM are quantitatively compared with the original MRT-LBM. Finally, some numerical simulations are carried out to assess the new optimized MRT-LBM schemes.     

An instrument for measuring low optical rotation angle

This paper develops a linear heterodyne interferometer based on phase-locked extraction for measuring low optical rotation angle. The validity of the proposed design is demonstrated by measuring a half-wave plate. The average relative error in the measured rotation angle of the half-wave plate is determined as just 0.74%. When applied to the measurement of glucose solutions with concentrations ranging from 0 to 1.2 g/dl, the average relative error in the measured rotation angle of glucose solutions is determined to be 1.46%. The correlation coefficient between the measured rotation angle and the glucose concentration is determined to be 0.999991, while the standard deviation is just 0.00051°. The current system is capable of measuring glucose concentration as low as 0.01 g/dl with an error of 6.67% in the rotation angle measurement. Overall, the experimental results demonstrate the ability of the proposed system to obtain highly accurate measurement of the optical rotation angle.     

A modified phase generation carrier technique for fiber-optic distributed disturbance sensor

A modified phase generation carrier technique used in fiber-optic distributed disturbance sensor (FDDS) is proposed and investigated. The FDDS locates the disturbance by dual Mach–Zehnder (MZ) interferometers, however, the initializing phase error of the two MZ interferometer causes the location errors. For the modified PGC technique, a narrow band analog low pass filter is designed, which solves the problem of facilitating the digital narrow band low pass filter in high speed A/D acquisition. In addition, a special demodulation signal is proposed to demodulate higher-order harmonic, compensate the time delay of the long optical fiber and enhance the signal to noise ratio. It is found that the location errors caused by phase drift can be eliminated in our experiments.     

A Dispersion Flattening Dispersion Compensating Fiber Design for Broadband Dispersion Compensation

An efficient dispersion compensating fiber (DCF) design is proposed based on a coaxial fiber structure, which provides dispersion compensation over a broad wavelength region matching that of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier gain spectrum. The design can provide dispersion coefficient that is nearly twice those of existing DCF designs. Due to the basic nature of the dispersion curve of this design, the total link dispersion cannot only be compensated but also can be flattened.     

Use of fibre gratings for bit skew compensation in all optical bit parallel WDM systems

We demonstrate transmission of two wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) bit parallel channels over 100 km of standard single mode fibre link using direct-modulated laser diodes at 10 Gbit/s channel. Step-chirped fibre gratings are used to simultaneously compensate to bit skew and dispersion. Bit skew of approximately 2.5 ns due to the fibre dispersion is completely compensated. Our work show shows that the step-chirped fibre grating technique can eliminate the bit skew for bit parallel WDM systems operating at Gbit rate over hundreds of kilometres of fibre link.     

利用色散管理抑制半导体光放大器引起的信道间串扰

理论研究了半导体光放大器增益饱和效应引起的信道间串扰,数值模拟了多路信道复用时系统的误码率随复用信道数和光功率的变化情况,发现随着复用信道数的增加,半导体光放大器增益饱和引起的信道间串扰越来越严重.对利用色散管理技术抑制半导体光放大器引起的信道间串扰进行了实验研究,实验验证了信号色散补偿之前用半导体光放大器放大可以抑制半导体光放大器引起的信道间串扰.结果表明,采用先放大后色散补偿这种新的色散补偿方案,可以有效抑制半导体光放大器引起的信道间串扰.     

Performance enhancement on mechanical and electrical effects for on-line fiber-optic bending loss measurement

For an automatic testing of the fiber bending loss parameter, we proposed an on-line fiber optic bending loss measurement system. Many impact factors from the supporting systems, free space coupling alignment, external spatial perturbation device and the other automatic testing systems may degrade the on-line fiber-optic bending loss measurement system. We reduce those impact factors and show the mechanical and electrical improvement in this paper. The accuracy can be improved by 3–5 dB for the proposed on-line bending loss measurement system. Development of an on-line fiber-optic bending loss measurement system can provide a fast-checking solution for jump-line quality improvement on fiber-from-the-desk (FFTD) access network.     

Jones precoder for polarization mode dispersion compensation

A new electrical-domain precoder is proposed to mitigate polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in optical communications by modeling a PMD-dominant fiber optical channel using a single input multiple output (SIMO) channel. Employing a bank of finite impulse response filters and a polarization modulator, and using parameters derived from the Jones matrix representation of PMD, the proposed precoder efficiently adapts to the time-varying nature of PMD and simultaneously pre-equalizes both polarization modes at the transmitter. The transmitter-only structure avoids losing phase and polarization information due to the nonlinearity of the commonly used square law direct-detection receiver. Analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of channel mismatch due to feedback delay, channel estimation errors, and the impact of the finite length of the precoder filters. The analytical results are used to guide selection of the appropriate feedback rate for the adaptive system. Extensive simulation results confirm the efficiency of the proposed Jones precoder, and present it as an effective, low-cost replacement to the complicated, expensive optical-domain counter-parts.     

Novel polarization ellipticity angle modulation scheme for analog optical space communication

A novel polarization ellipticity angle modulation scheme is proposed and analyzed. The scheme shows linear modulation property and negligible phase noise. With this method, analog signal such as microwave sub-carrier can be directly encoded onto light carrier, simplifying the integration of traditional RF system and optical space communication system.     

Drawing parameters optimization for birefringence reduction in optical fibers

The impact of the drawing process on the stress-induced birefringence in optical fiber is experimentally analyzed. By means of the photoelastic tomographic technique, residual internal stresses are measured in fiber samples drawn under different conditions of temperature, drawing tension and speed. From measured residual stress distributions, the stress-induced birefringence and beatlength are mathematically derived and compared, proving that an effective birefringence reduction can be obtained by a proper choice of drawing parameters.     

基于非线性薛定谔方程的一种孤子特性的分析

光孤子通信是解决光信息在光纤中长距离传输时衰减和色散问题的一种较为有效的方法.本文在现有带有群速度色散、非线性项、三阶非线性系数以及增益/损耗项的非线性薛定谔方程孤子解的基础上,给出了灵活性的孤子解.采用具有复振幅的行波解作为试探解,将试探解代入原方程,在实部和虚部分离的基础上,引入三个变量函数,最后表征出孤子解波函数的平方,并应用Matlab选择不同的变量函数进行数值模拟,得到图示结果.结果表明孤子解对于参变量变化是敏感的.选择适当的参量,得到合适的孤子,这一结论对光纤中孤子通信具有重要意义.     

A phase quadrature interferometer for measuring the small optical rotation angle of a chiral medium

The passage of a linearly polarized beam through a chiral material and a phase retarder will induce a phase difference between the s and p polarizations of the beam. In this study, a phase quadrature interferometer is designed to measure the phase difference variation proportional to the optical rotation. The proportionality constant (or measurement sensitivity) can be greatly enhanced by setting the retardation of the phase retarder close to 0° or 180°. The experimental results demonstrate that with our system we can obtain a measurement resolution for the rotational angle of better than 3.5° × 10⁻⁴. This method has several advantages such as a simple optical setup, easier operation in real time, and low cost. In addition, due to the common-path arrangement, surrounding noise can be eliminated.