Axalumes Phase I technical effort will define, develop, and validate a concept for a scalable, integrated silicon-tunable multi-wavelength laser for an Acoustic Emissions (AE) event detection system operating in a standard infrared communication band for powering, sensing, and communicating between a central command location and multiple fiber-Bragg grating sensors distributed along a single-mode optical fiber.
Benefit: The anticipated benefit to the DoN is the availability of a cost-effective dynamically tunable source for efficient and intellegent monitoring of a larger number of fiber sensors using a fixed number of agile tunable lasers. A second benefit is that the scale and cost of such this system can be brought down with silicon photonic manufacturing available through US-based foundries. An additional benefit is the low size-weight and power enable by photonic integration. The availability of a cost-effective and power-efficient centralized monitoring system with a high level of integration is also expected to propel demand for commercial distributed fiber optic sensing applications in a number of industry sectors including telecommunications, aerospace, automotive, mining, construction & infrastructure, and oil & gas industries.
Keywords: semiconductor lasers, semiconductor lasers, silicon photonics, tunable lasers, fiber sensors, fiber-Bragg gratings
