Wideband fiber-optic Fabry-Perot acoustic sensing scheme using high-speed absolute cavity length demodulation

In this paper, we realize a wideband fiber-optic Fabry-Perot (F-P) acoustic sensing (FPAS) scheme by utilizing a high-speed absolute cavity length demodulation with a 70-kHz maximum line rate spectrometer. The wideband FPAS is made of a pre-stress stainless-steel diaphragm based on F-P interferometric structure. The real-time absolute F-P cavity lengths are calculated by a phase demodulation method, which is realized by processing the interference image at a 70-kHz frame rate. Acoustic signal is obtained by extracting the AC component of the demodulated cavity length. The experimental results show that the spectrometer can be running at a 50-kHz line rate, and an acoustic detection wideband of 20 Hz to 20 kHz is obtained. The noise-limited minimum detectable sound pressure level is 18.8 dB, which is sensitive enough for the communication of human voice. The proposed wideband acoustic sensing scheme achieves good robustness, which is promising as a speech-sound microphone for communication during the magnetic resonance imaging procedure.