Advanced fiber optic seismic sensors (geophone) research

The systematical research on the fiber optic seismic sensors based on optical Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensing technology is presented in this thesis. Optical fiber sensors using fiber Bragg gratings have a number of advantages such as immunity to electromagnetic interference, lightweight, low power consumption. The FBG sensor is intrinsically sensitive to dynamic strain signals and the strain sensitivity can approach sub micro-strain. Furthermore, FBG sensors are inherently suited for multiplexing, which makes possible networked/arrayed deployment on a large scale.; The basic principle of the FBG geophone is that it transforms the acceleration of ground motion into the strain signal of the FBG sensor through mechanical design, and after the optical demodulation generates the analog voltage output proportional to the strain changes. The customized eight-channel FBG seismic sensor prototype is described here which consists of FBG sensor/demodulation grating pairs attached on the spring-mass mechanical system. The sensor performance is evaluated systematically in the laboratory using the conventional accelerometer and geophone as the benchmark, Two major applications of FBG seismic sensor are demonstrated. One is in the battlefield remote monitoring system to detect the presence of personnel, wheeled vehicles, and tracked vehicles. The other application is in the seismic reflection survey of oilfield exploration to collect the seismic waves from the earth. The field tests were carried out in the air force base and the oilfield respectively. It is shown that the FBG geophone has higher frequency response bandwidth and sensitivity than conventional moving-coil electromagnetic geophone and the military Rembass-II S/A sensor.; Our objective is to develop a distributed FBG seismic sensor network to recognize and locate the presence of seismic sources with high inherent detection capability and a low false alarm rate in an integrated system.