Digital control of a white light system for interrogation of optical fiber interferometric sensors
E. Velosa, C. Gouveia, University of Madeira (Portugal); P. A. S. Jorge, INESC Porto - Institute for Systems and Computers Engineering of Porto (Portugal); J. M. Baptista, University of Madeira (Portugal)
A digital control system to interrogate optical fiber interferometric sensors is presented. The system was implemented using a DAQ board and LabView Software, it is based on white light interferometry, and can use four different synthetic heterodyne and pseudo-heterodyne signal detection schemes. The system was tested and compared with standard hardware instrumentation using a fiber optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer to readout strain sensitive Fabry-Pérot sensors in a differential configuration. It is shown that the virtual instrumentation has a good performance being a viable alternative for use in compact portable sensing systems.
