Roger Ian Crickmore

Beat frequency measurement system for multiple dual polarization fiber DFB lasers

This paper describes the design and testing of an electronic system intended to record the beat frequency signal from up to eight serially multiplexed dual polarization fiber distributed feedback lasers. The beat frequency from each laser is first mixed down to around 70 MHz and then measured using a PC based counter system. The gate frequency and, hence, the sampling rate, is designed to be around 1 kHz, and the frequency resolution of the system is found to be equal to the gate frequency. The system has been used to measure the beat frequency variation of fiber lasers due to either rapidly varying temperature or flexing motion. Measurements made with multiple fiber laser sensors show that the crosstalk between different sensors is very low.

Fiber-optic microphones for battlefield acoustics

We describe recent work to evaluate the potential performance of an interferometric fiber-optic microphone for battlefield acoustics. The microphone design has high sensitivity and flat response at low frequency and is readily multiplexed. The design is simple and could be manufactured at low cost, which is desirable since in operation the sensors may need to be disposable. Field trial results from an array of microphones are discussed.

High efficiency TDM/WDM architectures for seismic reservoir monitoring

Fibre-optic seismic sensor systems for permanent monitoring of oil and gas reservoirs have been under development for several years. Such systems, which may comprise over 30 000 sensor channels, require an efficient optical multiplexing architecture. We report test results from a time and wavelength based multiplexing architecture combining up to 256 sensor channels onto a single optical fibre pair, while still allowing low system noise floor and dynamic range over 180 dB.

Fiber optic sensors for seismic intruder detection

An array of fibre optic seismic intruder detection sensors has recently been tested by QinetiQ. The array consisted of a set of distributed cable sensors and accelerometers, each being interrogated by an interferometric effect. Both types of sensor were able to detect a person crossing over the array, and frequency analysis of the signals suggests ways in which automatic intruder detection could be achieved.

Fiber optic security systems for land- and sea-based applications

QinetiQ have been developing security systems for land and sea applications using interferometric based fiber optic sensors. We have constructed and tested a multi-channel fiber-optic hydrophone seabed array, which is designed for maritime surveillance and harbor security applications. During a recent trial it was deployed in a coastal location for an 8 day period during which it successfully detected and tracked a wide variety of traffic. The array can be interfaced with an open architecture processing system that carries out automatic detection and tracking of targets. For land based applications we have developed a system that uses high sensitivity fiber optic accelerometers and buried fiber optic cable as sensor elements. This uses the same opto-electronic interrogator as the seabed array, so a combined land and sea security system for coastal assets could be monitored using a single interrogator.