Novel gas sensor combined active fiber loop ring-down and dual wavelengths differential absorption method

Abstract

A novel active fiber loop ring-down gas sensor combined with dual wavelengths differential absorption method is proposed. Two Distributed Feedback Laser Diodes (DFB LDs) with different wavelengths are employed. One LD whose wavelength covered with the absorption line of target gas is used for sensing. Another LD whose wavelength is centered outside the absorption line is used for reference. The gas absorption loss can be obtained by differencing the reference signal and sensing signal. Compared with traditional method of one wavelength employed, it can eliminate the influence of the cavity loss variety and photoelectric device drift in the system efficiently. An Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) with Automatic Gain Control (AGC) is used to compensate the loss of the light in the ring-down cavity, which will increase the cavity round trips and improve the precision of gas detection. And two fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are employed to get rid of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) spectrum noise as filters. The calibrating ethyne samples of different concentrations are measured with a 65 mm long gas cell in order to evaluate the effect of reference. The results show the relative deviation is found to be less than ± 0.4% of 0.1% ethyne when a certain additional loss from 0 to 1.2dB is introduced to the cavity and the relative deviation of measured concentration is less than ± 0.5% over 24 hours.