Review of fiber Bragg grating sensor technology

Abstract

The current status of the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor technology was reviewed. Owing to their salient advantages, including immunity to electromagnetic interference, lightweight, compact size, high sensitivity, large operation bandwidth, and ideal multiplexing capability, FBG sensors have attracted considerable interest in the past three decades. Among these sensing physical quantities, temperature and strain are the most widely investigated ones. In this paper, the sensing principle of FBG sensors was briefly introduced first. Then, we reviewed the status of research and applications of FBG sensors. As very important for industrial applications, multiplexing and networking of FBG sensors had been introduced briefly. Moreover, as a key technology, the wavelength interrogation methods were also reviewed carefully. Finally, we analyzed the problems encountered in engineering applications and gave a general review on the development of interrogation methods of FBG sensor.

Keywords

fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors / multiplexing / networking / interrogation

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Acknowledgements

This work was jointly supported by the National Key Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60736039), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 10904075, 11004110, and 50802044), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, and the National Key Basic Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2010CB327605).

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