High-efficiency FBG array sensor interrogation system via a neural network working with sparse data

FBG array sensors have been widely used in the multi-point monitoring of large structures due to their excellent optical multiplexing capability. This paper proposes a cost-effective demodulation system for FBG array sensors based on a Neural Network (NN). The stress variations applied to the FBG array sensor are encoded by the array waveguide grating (AWG) as transmitted intensities under different channels and fed to an end-to-end NN model, which receives them and simultaneously establishes a complex nonlinear relationship between the transmitted intensity and the actual wavelength to achieve absolute interrogation of the peak wavelength. In addition, a low-cost data augmentation strategy is introduced to break the data size bottleneck common in data-driven methods so that the NN can still achieve superior performance with small-scale data. In summary, the demodulation system provides an efficient and reliable solution for multi-point monitoring of large structures based on FBG array sensors.