Fiber laser based hydrophone systems

Abstract

We report our recent work on distributed feedback fiber laser based hydrophones. Some issues related to sensitivity, such as fiber laser phase condition, demodulation, and packaging, are also discussed. With the development of appropriate digital signal processing (DSP) techniques and packaging designs, an interferometric-type distributed feedback (DFB) fiber laser hydrophone system with acoustic sensitivity of 58.0 dB·re·μPa·Hz−0.5 at 1 kHz or a minimum detectable acoustic pressure below 800 μPa during field test is attained. We have also investigated an intensity-type DFB fiber laser hydrophone system and its performance.