Investigation of PZT driven tunable optical filter nonlinearity using FBG optical fiber sensing system

The nonlinearity of a piezo-electrical transducer (PZT) driven tunable optical filter (TOF) is investigated and evaluated using FBG optical fiber sensing system including a broadband optical source and a tunable laser (TL) with a group of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). Polynomial fit is adopted to model the nonlinearity. Under three-order polynomial fit, the random error in wavelength measurement using this TOF and a reference FBG is minimized to be below 20 pm. At the same time, the absolute error in wavelength measurement is kept below 0.25 nm. Under four-order or higher polynomial fit, a sharp increase of the random measurement error is observed. This research reveals the possibility of using PZT driven TOFs in optical spectroscopy where high resolution, high-accuracy, and fast time-response is required.