Preventive medicine is growing in importance, with vascular stiffness being a key factor. Blood flow velocity plays a crucial role in assessing vascular health. If velocity exceeds 12 m/s, it indicates an unhealthy vascular condition. Traditional methods of measuring blood flow velocity involve contact-based systems, but there is a rising demand for non-contact alternatives. Two common non-contact methods are Doppler laser interferometry and shearing-speckle interferometry. The latter is simpler, cost-effective, and mitigates the impact of body movement. This study aimed to develop a blood flow velocity measurement device using shearing-speckle interferometry. Experimental results demonstrated successful estimation of blood flow velocity using this method, showing potential for its application in preventive medicine to monitor and diagnose vascular stiffness.
Amplitude-modulated continuous-wave laser scanner with focusing optics can realize extremely high-precision 3D measurement. Since amplitude-modulated continuous-wave scheme employs periodical modulation, the longitudinal resolution and the maximum unambiguous range are in a trade-off. Our system utilizes dual-frequency modulation compromise such trade-off. However, such an attractive laser scanner suffers from ranging ambiguity due to aliasing, which is the systematic error inherent in amplitude-modulated continuous-wave scheme. We have removed the ranging ambiguity by aliasing synthesis. Secondly, the acquired 3D point clouds contain phase jumping at the maximum unambiguous range. With leveraging the relationship between the intensity and spatial information, the phase jumping was unwrapped to recover the spatial continuity. Thirdly, the 3D point clouds in the defocused region of the amplitude-modulated continuous-wave laser scanner distort since the depth-of-focus of focusing optics is generally cm order. The 3D point clouds in the defocused area are contaminated by aliasing which can also be regarded as a ranging ambiguity problem. We have experimentally restored the 3D point clouds by aliasing synthesis with the assistance of intensity information. The ranging area can be elongated by at least ten times of the depth-of-focus with such data processing. With the above-all mentioned configuration and data processing, we have compromised the ranging ambiguity inherent in the amplitude-modulated continuous-wave laser scanner comprehensively. We expect that our results contribute to high-precision industrial inspection for Industry 4.0.
With the rise of Industry 4.0, smart factory is fast becoming a key concept in infrastructure. To realize the autonomous production system, it is necessary to ensure the parts are properly manufactured. 3D scanners are expected to play a vital role in quality assessment in smart factories. Especially, amplitude-modulated continuous-wave laser scanners benefit from high accuracy and high sensitivity which are suitable for industrial inspection. However, due to the limited dynamic range of receiver electronics, such laser scanners fail to obtain the data points in 3D measurement of highly reflective objects. This impairment deteriorates the performance of conversion of 3D point clouds to solid data for shape inspection, 3D modeling, reverse engineering etc. We coped with receiver saturation by adopting a high-speed polarizationindependent variable optical attenuator in our laser scanner. With such a lase scanner, we have succeeded in prevention of data loss due to receiver saturation.
Amplitude-modulated continuous-wave laser scanners can realize 3D measurement with high longitudinal resolution. With installation of focusing optics in the laser scanning system, the high lateral resolution can be realized, which is enhanced by the focused beam spot size <100 um. However, the depth-of-focus of the focusing optics is generally several cm. The 3D data of the defocused objects are contaminated by aliases distributed by integer times of the half cycle of the periodical modulation. Aliasing is an impairment inherent in the amplitude-modulated continuous-wave scheme. We experimentally recovered the defocused data drastically by synthesizing those aliases. The ranging area can be elongated by at least ten times with such data processing compared with the depth of focus. Our results will contribute to highprecision industrial inspection for Industry 4.0.
We demonstrated distributed strain measurement using the slope-assisted Brillouin optical correlation-domain analysis (SA-BOCDA) with polarization maintaining fiber (PMF), which has no polarization scrambler. The 0.35- m-long strained section in 47-m-long PMF was clearly measured with 1-kHz sampling ratio and no averaging. Next, we proposed the new concept of the human interactive sound effector using SA-BOCDA with PMF, which means that the distributed measurement data was used as sound waveform directly. Then we demonstrated the sound wave controlling with SA-BOCDA with PMF. This result will be useful for not only the sensing application but also the musical instrument application based on nonlinear optical phenomenon.
Laser scanners have emerged as powerful instrument for high-precision 3D geometry measurement and high-resolution reverse engineering in combination with 3D printers etc. However, such attractive laser scanners have failed to address to fading phenomenon, which was a critical issue of laser scanning systems. Although extensive research has been carried out on the fading issue, no single study exists which effectively coped with such an impairment inherent in 3D geometry measurement using laser scanners. In this article, we propose a 3D laser scanner having a tunable high-speed polarization scrambling scheme and cope with the fading phenomenon. To our knowledge, this is the first report of versatile removal of the fading phenomenon inherent in laser scanning systems
Power-based refractive index (RI) sensing is demonstrated by exploiting an ultrasonically pressed plastic optical fiber (POF). We can be easily and cost-efficiently fabricate this structure, within a short while ( ~1 s), without using external heat sources or chemical materials. We have only to simply press the horn connected to an ultrasonic transducer against part of the POF. The RI dependence of the transmitted power exhibits linear trends in the RI ranges from ~1.32 to ~1.36 (coefficient: −62 dB/RIU (RI unit)) and ~1.40 to ~1.44 (coefficient: −257 dB/RIU)). We also study the temperature dependence of the transmitted power.
We report an experimental study on the spectral dependence of depolarized guided acoustic-wave Brillouin scattering (GAWBS) in a silica single-mode fiber (SMF) on acoustic impedance of external materials. The GAWBS spectrum was measured when the acoustic impedance was changed from 1.51 to 2.35 kg/s⋅mm2. With increasing acoustic impedance, the linewidth increased; the dependence was almost linear in the range up to ∼2.0 kg/s⋅mm2 with an acoustic impedance dependence coefficient of 0.16 MHz/kg/s⋅mm2, which is directly applicable to acoustic impedance sensing. Meanwhile, with increasing acoustic impedance, the central frequency nonlinearly decreased, which probably originates from the change in the effective outer diameter of the silica SMF.
We review the unique properties of a so-called optical fiber fuse phenomenon in plastic optical fibers (POFs), including its slow propagation velocity (1–2 orders of magnitude slower than that in silica fibers) and threshold power density (1/180 of the value for silica fibers). We also show that an oscillatory continuous curve instead of periodic voids is formed after the passage of the fuse, and that the bright spot is not a plasma but an optical discharge, the temperature of which is ~3600 K. We then discuss its impact on distributed Brillouin sensing based on POFs.
We demonstrate high-speed distributed sensing based on slope-assisted (SA-) Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry (BOCDR) using high-loss plastic optical fibers (POFs). Unlike the case of silica fibers, due to the gradual reduction in the transmitted power along the POF, the strain and temperature sensitivities are found to depend on sensing position. This unique effect is investigated both theoretically and experimentally, and then a correct POF-based distributed measurement is shown to be feasible by compensating this effect.
It has been reported that temperature sensors based on modal interference in perfluorinated graded-index (GI) plastic optical fibers (POFs) show the world’s highest temperature sensitivity of +49.8 nm/°C/m at 1300 nm at room temperature, which is over 1800 times the value in silica multimode fibers (MMFs). In this work, we newly find that the temperature sensitivity (absolute value) is significantly enhanced with increasing temperature toward ~70°C, which is close to the glass-transition temperature of the core polymer. When the core diameter is 62.5 μm, the sensitivity at 72 °C at 1300 nm is +202 nm/°C/m, which is approximately 26 times the value obtained at room temperature and even over 7000 times the highest value previously reported using a silica MMF. As the glass-transition temperature of polymers can be generally set to an arbitrary value, this characteristic could be used to develop POF-based temperature sensors with ultra-high sensitivity not only at ~70°C but at arbitrary temperature in future.
KEYWORDS: Signal to noise ratio, Reflectometry, Spatial resolution, Sensors, Single mode fibers, Signal detection, Modulation, Microwave radiation, Silica, Signal processing
We develop a new configuration of Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry by sophisticated electrical signal processing. Through a variety of demonstrations, we experimentally show that this system can satisfy many advantages simultaneously, such as (1) high sampling/repetition rate, (2) intrinsically one-end-access interrogation, (3) high spatial resolution, (4) wide strain dynamic range, (5) high signal-to-noise ratio, and (6) system simplicity and cost efficiency.
We evaluate whether the measurement stability of Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry (BOCDR) using plastic optical fibers (POFs) can be enhanced by polarization scrambling. Two major factors that affect the signal-to-noise ratio in BOCDR, i.e., the spatial resolution and the incident power are varied, and their influences on the distributed measurements with polarization scrambling are experimentally investigated. We thus clarify that in POF-based BOCDR, unlike BOCDR using standard silica glass fibers, polarization scrambling is effective in enhancing the measurement stability only when the spatial resolution is sufficiently low or when the incident power is sufficiently high.
We developed strain and temperature sensors based on multimode interference in perfluorinated graded-index (GI) plastic optical fibers, and investigate their sensing performance at 1300 nm. At room temperature, we achieve ultra-high sensitivities of strain and temperature of –112 pm/με and +49.8 nm/°C/m, the absolute value of which are approximately 7.2 and over 1800 times as large as those in silica GI multimode fibers, respectively. We also find that the temperature sensitivity is drastically enhanced with increasing temperature toward ~80 °C, where phase transition of core polymer partially occurs.
To perform distributed strain and temperature measurement, we have recently developed simplified Brillouin optical correlation-domain reflectometry (S-BOCDR), in which the light Fresnel-reflected at the ends of the fiber under test (FUT) is used as a reference light. Here, we implement S-BOCDR using a plastic optical fiber (POF) as an FUT, which provides the following advantages over S-BOCDR using a standard silica single-mode fiber (SMF): (1) the beat signal of the Stokes light and the Fresnel-reflected light that is obtained at the interface between the POF and the SMF (the pigtail of an optical circulator) can be stabilized, and (2) the effect of the 0th correlation peak can be easily and effectively suppressed by exploiting a so-called Brillouin frequency shift-hopping phenomenon. We then experimentally demonstrate a distributed measurement and detect a 0.46-m-long heated POF section.
After briefly reviewing the fundamental properties of Brillouin scattering in plastic optical fibers (POFs) at 1.55 μm, including a so-called “memory” function, we present our latest experimental results on POF-based distributed Brillouin sensing of strain and temperature with a centimeter-order spatial resolution and a high signal-to-noise ratio.
We report on the first observation of the Brillouin gain spectrum in a perfluorinated graded-index plastic optical fiber (POF) tapered by a heat-and-pull technique. The Stokes power was slightly enhanced by tapering probably on account of higher optical power density in the core. In addition, the Brillouin frequency shift was decreased by ~40 MHz, which was experimentally verified to be partially caused by high temperature applied to the POF during the taper fabrication process. We anticipate that our findings will provide a basic principle of temperature sensing with “memory” function.
Poly(pentafluorostyrene) (PPFS), which can be easily synthesized and has a low optical loss window at 850 nm, is a promising alternative for a costly perfluorinated polymer as a base material of polymer optical fibers (POFs). To investigate the potential of a PPFS-POF as a Brillouin-based temperature sensing fiber, the Brillouin frequency shift and its temperature dependence of PPFS were estimated using an ultrasonic pulse-echo technique. The temperature coefficient, which determines the sensitivity of the temperature sensing, was approximately –7.1 MHz/K independently of the molecular weight and was nearly identical to that in perfluorinated POFs.
Recently, distributed strain/temperature measurement based on Brillouin scattering in polymer optical fibers (POFs) has
been successfully demonstrated, but its signal-to-noise ratio is not yet sufficient. One approach to overcome this issue is
to enhance the incident optical power, which could cause a so-called fiber fuse phenomenon. In this study, we report the
first observation of the fiber fuse in POFs. A fuse propagation velocity of 21.9 mm/s, which is 1–2 orders of magnitude
slower than that in standard silica fibers, is experimentally demonstrated. The achieved threshold power density and
proportionality constant between the propagation velocity and the power density are 1/180 of and 17 times the values for
silica fibers, respectively. An oscillatory continuous curve instead of periodic voids is formed after the passage of the
fuse. An easy fuse termination method is also presented.
Enhancement of Brillouin scattering signal attenuating along optical fiber due to the inherent propagation loss can extend the sensing range or increase the sensing resolution of Brillouin distributed fiber-optic sensing. In this paper, we demonstrate a scheme to investigate the amplification effect of 980-nm pump on Brillouin gain spectrum in an erbiumdoped optical fiber (EDF). The Brillouin Stokes power is exponentially raised with increasing the pump power, indicating that adjusting the pump power can control the Brillouin signal in an EDF. We also show that drastic enhancement of Brillouin signal should be possible by using a high-power 980-nm pump laser.
Stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in plastic optical fibers (POFs) is observed, for the first time to the best of our
knowledge, using pump-probe technique without lock-in detection, and the dependences of the Brillouin gain spectrum on POF length, pump power, and probe power are fully investigated. An optimal POF length exists for SBS observation, because POFs have relatively high propagation loss of 250 dB/km at 1.55 μm; it is found to be 3.8 m when 21.1-dBm pump and 22.2-dBm probe waves are used. As the probe and pump powers grow higher, the Stokes power is also increased but nonlinearly, which indicates that the Brillouin signal observed with this technique can be directly applied to the implementation of POF-based Brillouin optical time-domain analysis systems.
With their high thermal stability compared with other plastic optical fibers (POFs), partially chlorinated graded-index
POFs (PCGI-POFs) are a promising candidate to develop the sensing heads of Brillouin-based distributed strain and
temperature sensors. In this study, the Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) and its temperature dependence in a PCGI-POF
are estimated by using ultrasonic pulse-echo technique. The estimated BFS is ~4.43 GHz with its temperature coefficient of approximately –6.9 MHz/K at 1550 nm. Its absolute value is ~5.8 times as large as that of silica single-mode fibers, and even larger than that of a perflurointated GI-POF. Its fracture strain of ~3.0% (mostly in elastic region) is small compared with other POFs, and so it appears difficult to estimate the BFS dependence on strain in a PCGI-POF with this technique. These experimental results imply that the Brillouin scattering in PCGI-POFs is potentially applicable to highprecision temperature sensing.
A cost-effective technique for coupling a plastic optical fiber (POF) to a silica single-mode fiber (SMF) is proposed,
which can, by exploiting a multimode fiber (MMF), avoid the damage or burning at the butt-coupled POF/SMF interface.
Using this coupling technique, we also show that the Brillouin Stokes power in a POF can be enhanced by combined use
of pulsed pump and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. When the pulsed pump with average optical power of 18 dBm,
duty ratio of 15%, and pulse period of 2 μs is launched into a 200-m-long POF, 4-dB enhancement of the Stokes power
is obtained compared to that with 18-dBm continuous-wave pump. The relatively small enhancement is probably caused
by the high Brillouin threshold of POFs. The Stokes power dependence on duty ratio is non-monotonic, which might
originate from a longer phonon lifetime in POFs than that in silica SMFs.
Brillouin scattering properties in rare-earth-doped fibers, including Nd3+-doped, Tm3+-doped, Sm3+-doped, and
Ho3+/Tm3+ co-doped fibers, can potentially be controlled at high speed by pumping, but there has been no report on their
detailed investigations. In this study, the Brillouin gain spectra (BGS) in such rare-earth-doped single-mode fibers are
measured, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, at 1.55 μm without pumping, and the Brillouin frequency shift
(BFS) and its dependences on strain and temperature are investigated. Clear BGS was observed for the Nd3+-doped and
Tm3+-doped fibers, but BGS was not detected for the Sm3+-doped and Ho3+/Tm3+ co-doped fibers probably because of
their extremely high propagation losses at 1.55 μm and small Brillouin gain coefficients. The BFS of the Nd3+-doped
fiber was ~10.82 GHz, and its strain and temperature coefficients were 466 MHz/% and 0.726 MHz/K, respectively. As
for the Tm3+-doped fiber, the BFS was ~10.90 GHz, and its strain and temperature coefficients were 433 MHz/% and
0.903 MHz/K, respectively. These measurement results are compared with those of silica fibers.
We estimated the dependences of Brillouin frequency shift (BFS) on temperature and strain in poly(methyl
methacrylate)-based polymer optical fibers using ultrasonic pulse-echo technique at ~10 MHz. The estimated BFS
dependence on temperature was linear with a coefficient of approximately -17 MHz/K at 650 nm pump, which was -34
times larger than that of silica fibers at 650 nm pump. In contrast, its strain dependence was found to be nonlinear,
probably originating from the elastic-to-plastic transition.
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