An Acoustic Sensor Based on Active Fiber Fabry-Pérot Microcavities

We demonstrate an active acoustic sensor based on a high-finesse fiber Fabry-Pérot micro-cavity with a gain medium. The sensor is a compacted device lasing around 1535 nm by external optical pumping. The acoustic pressure acting on the sensor disturbs the emitted laser frequency, which is subsequently transformed to beat signals through a delay-arm interferometer, and directly detected by a photo-detector. In this configuration, the sensing device exhibits a high sensitivity of 2.6 V/Pa and a noise equivalent acoustic signal level of 230 μPa/Hz1/2 at a frequency of 4 kHz. Experimental results provide a wide frequency response from 100 Hz to 18 kHz. As the sensor works at communication wavelength and the output laser can be electrically tuned in the 10 nm range, a multi-sensor network can be easily constructed with the dense wavelength division multiplexing devices. Extra lasers or demodulators are unnecessary thus the proposed sensor is low cost and easy fabrication. The proposed sensor shows broad applications prospect in remote oil and gas leakage exploration, photo-acoustic spectrum detection, and sound source location.