This article presents the use of a sensor with fiber Bragg grating along with an interrogation system used for monitoring the overhead lines’ wire elongation. The possible interrogation methods based on adjusted filters were considered. In the experimental part, three types of fiber Bragg grating pairs, characterized by a small shift in spectra in pairs and gratings with exact matching, were examined. The study showed that, by choosing the appropriate mechanical parameters of the elongation transformer with the optical parameters of the sensor and dedicated filter, the optomechanical system can be adjusted to the required range of overhead line wire sag observation. The range of sag depends on the distance between the poles, the wire type, and its real length in the span, which effectively determines the sag.

The development of fibre optic sensors for measuring the refractive index is related to the creation of new periodic structures and demodulation algorithms for the measured spectrum. Recently, we proposed a double-comb Tilted fibre Bragg grating (DCTFBG) structure. In this article, we analyse such a structure for measuring the refractive index in comparison to a single classical structure. Increasing the number of modes causes a significant change in the Fourier spectrum of optical spectra. For the purpose of data pre-processing, we propose the Fourier Transform as a filtering method in the frequency domain. Then, we analyse separately the band-filtered optical spectra for several frequency ranges. For quantitative analysis, we use algorithms that use quantitative changes in the transmission, i.e., the method of the envelope and the length of the spectrum contour. We propose the use of the Hilbert transform as the envelope method. The second type of algorithms used are methods determining the shift of spectrum features along the wavelength axis. The method of determining the centre of gravity of the area bounded by the envelope and the maximum of the second derivative of the smoothed cumulative spectrum contour length is proposed here. Using the developed methods, the measurement resolution was achieved at the level of 2 × 10⁻⁵ refractive index unit.

A novel approach to fibre Bragg grating spectra processing is proposed. The method is based on the use of nonlinear filtration and raising the spectrum value to the second power. A combination of geometric and arithmetic mean filtering is used as nonlinear filtration. The properties of the denoising method are presented on simulation data with different signal-to-noise ratios and on experimental data. The most advantageous combination is raising the intensity of the spectrum to the square power preceded by its significant smoothing. The centroid, fast phase correlation, and cross-correlation methods are used to determine the wavelength shift in the spectrum. To obtain experimental data, measurements of the FBG in reflection mode placed in a temperature chamber with the possibility of temperature control are obtained. The simulations, measurements, and their numerical analysis confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods for demodulating the wavelength shift of FBG spectra.

Fibre optic sensors using tilted fibre Bragg grating (TFBG) have high sensitivity for refractive index measurements. In order to achieve good metrological parameters of the measurement, an appropriate method of spectrum demodulation must be used. The method proposed in the article is an improvement of the spectral length algorithm. The spectral length parameter is treated as the sum of the derivative filter responses. In the original version, the first difference of spectrum elements was used, while this article proposes to use the wavelet transform to calculate the numerical derivative approximation. The advantage of this solution is an easy way to select the level of smoothing filtration by changing the scale parameter. The derivation is appropriate even for a relatively low signal-to-noise level. The approximation of the spectral length by the derivative calculated using the wavelet transform eliminates the high-frequency noise of the optical signal. The absolute value of determined spectral derivatives after significant smoothing can be used to estimate the wavelength of the decay of modes. After analyzing experimental data and performing calculations, it turns out that this is a linear method with better resolution than the contour length algorithm.

Fibre Bragg gratings are one of the most popular sensors with a huge number of applications. Their most important advantage is signal modulation consisting in shifting the spectrum in the wavelength domain. Determining the wavelength shift is the most important issue in precise measurements of various quantities. New demodulation methods are constantly being developed. Many of them have good properties, but they do not gain much polarity. This is partly due to their high complexity and partly to a small improvement in the accuracy of determining the wavelength shift in relation to classical methods. Cumulative preprocessing is a very simple method of spectrum processing with the property of reducing the influence of noise on the result. The method can be used directly or with additional algorithms. In this article, we demonstrate the advantages of this method and the possibilities of combining it with other signal processing methods. We show that this method is much simpler than the spectrum denoising methods and additionally simplifies the next stage of the algorithm, i.e., determining the wavelength shift itself.

This article presents the effect of fiber Bragg gratings side lobes on interrogation systems consisting of sensor and matched filters. The conducted research shows that high-value side lobe structures applied as sensors and/or filters are characterized by some interesting properties. The paper presents both numerical analysis and experimental verification of the fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) interrogation systems with matched filters for gratings containing high side lobes. Numerical modeling of Bragg structures was performed for two different cases: uniform and inverse apodization. Modification of apodization can change the side lobe reflectance level even above levels found in uniform structures. This is a case not described in the literature, especially in terms of possible applications. Transfer characteristics, i.e., the relationship between power intensity as a function of wavelength shift, were determined. A collection of gratings with spectra corresponding to those analyzed in numerical experiments were fabricated. Next, the transfer characteristics of the interrogation systems containing real FBG were determined. The properties of the proposed systems are described. It has been shown that a significant level of sidebands, which is often the subject of many drawbacks in filtering or telecommunications systems, can be an advantage. It has been demonstrated that a high level of side lobes can be used to increase the measurement range of the FBG sensor interrogation systems. It has been determined numerically and confirmed experimentally that from the point of view of the design of sensor interrogation systems, it is beneficial to combine specific pairs of gratings: one with a spectrum characterized by a low side lobe level and a second one in which the spectrum has very high side lobes.