An Improved Acoustic Pick-Up for Straight Line-Type Sagnac Fiber Optic Acoustic Sensing System

An improved acoustic pick-up is presented to enhance the acoustic sensing sensitivity of the straight line-type Sagnac fiber optic acoustic sensing system. A hollow elastomer cylinder is introduced into the system, and the optical fiber is tightly wound around the cylinder to construct the pick-up. The theoretical analysis was finished, and it showed that the improved pick-up will bring in an extra phase change and let the phase difference increase almost an order. The extra phase change will enhance the sensing sensitivity correspondingly. The titanium alloy elastic cylinder was designed and manufactured. The experiment system was built, and a sinusoidal acoustic signal was used as the sound source. The tests were taken during 100–1500 Hz, and the experimental study showed that the sensitivity was more than 130 mV/Pa when the pick-up was used as the acoustic sensing element, and compared to the fiber only system, the sensitivity was enhanced more than 71.2%. The improved pick-up will be helpful in sound recognition and expand the application area of the Sagnac acoustic sensing system.