Weak signal ultrafast interrogation of a micro-nano FBG probe sensor based on the hybrid amplified dispersion Fourier-transform method.

To elucidate the thermal transport mechanisms at interfaces in micro- and nanoscale electronic devices, real-time monitoring of temperature variations at the microscopic and nanoscopic levels is crucial. Micro-nano fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors have been demonstrated as effective in-situ optical temperature probes for measuring local temperatures. Time-stretch dispersion Fourier transform (TS-DFT) that enables fast, continuous, single-shot measurements in optical sensing has been integrated with a micro-nano FBG probe (FBG) for local temperature sensing. However, its temperature sensitivity and interrogation resolution are limited by the detection sensitivity. In this paper, we propose a hybrid amplified dispersion Fourier transform (ADFT) method to achieve ultrafast interrogation of FBG's weak signal. Thanks to the combined effect of TS-DFT and hybrid optical amplification, the reflection signal of the FBG is amplified, and the wavelength shift of the FBG sensor is converted to a temporal spacing change between two dispersed pulses through dispersion-induced wavelength-to-time mapping. The proposed method uses a homemade dissipative soliton mode-locked laser as the light source. The hybrid optical amplification technique comprises a L-band erbium-doped fiber amplifier and a distributed Raman amplifier. Their noise figure and net gain for the FBG are 4.81 dB and 15.93 dB, respectively. In addition, the temperature calibration experiments show that a sampling rate of 51.43 MHz and the maximum temperature measurement error of 1.98°C are achieved within the temperature range of 20.3°C to 97°C. The stability of the net gain provided by the hybrid ADFT system is demonstrated by the coefficient of variation, which ranges from 2.22% to 2.95% in the peak voltage signal of the FBG. This approach applies to scenarios requiring the handling of weak optical signals, particularly in temperature measurement at the micro-nano scale.