TECHNICAL ARTICLE

Temperature Sensor Using Fiber Optic Fizeau Homodyne Interferometer

R. Castillo-Rincon, J.J. Flores-Prieto, M.E. Baltazar-Lopez, and E.F. Zenteno-Cardozo
Centro Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo Tecnologico, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Int. Internado Palmira S/N, Col Palmira, CP 62490, Mexico

Keywords Optical Methods, Fiber Optics, Hybrid Methods, Impact/Shock Analysis, Interferometry, Temperature Correspondence M.E. Baltazar-Lopez, Centro Nacional de Investigacion y Desarrollo Tecnologico, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Int. Internado Palmira S/N, Col Palmira, CP. 62490, Mexico Email: martbalt@netscape.net Received: August 26, 2009; accepted: October 14, 2010 doi:10.1111/j.1747-1567.2010.00688.x

Abstract
The implementation and calibration of a temperature sensor for specular surfaces based on a homodyne ber optic Fizeau interferometer are presented. Temperature measurement is carried out by relating relative displacement of the interference pattern to the temperature of the surface being interrogated. The interferometer allows a coherent source to be divided into reference beam and another interfering beam, which is reected back from the measuring surface. The measuring surface is subjected to vibrations at specied relative high frequencies up to 10 kHz. The analogical signal of the interference pattern is observed via a photodetector. The calibration consisted of getting a relation of the relative displacements of the interference signal to the temperature changes within an interval of 3150 C with increments of 5 C. The sensor presented a linear behavior with 2.5 C uncertainty using an excitation frequency of 9 kHz.

Introduction Temperature is a physical variable related to the internal energy of the molecules in a substance. Numerous thermometry techniques have been developed for its measurement. The conceptual physical effects most commonly used in thermometry are electrical potential difference, changes in density, changes of emission power, and recently the optical effect. Nowadays optical metrology is possible due to the interference phenomenon. Interference is the superposition of two or more waves that result in a new wave pattern. Optical interference is based on the undulatory theory of the electromagnetic nature of light and it happens when two or more light waves with different optical paths interact or cross at each other, and this effect is known as Doppler effect. The physical principle for analysis of the Doppler effect is the superposition of two or more light waves in a point in space. Among the optical arrays to produce the interference phenomenon are those systems with wavefront division and interferometers with amplitude division.1 Among the amplitude division interferometers, three commonly used are the Michelson
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Interferometer, the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and the Sagnac interferometer.1 However, thanks to the laser invention and the possibility to use highly coherent quasi-monochromatic light, the creation of new interferometric congurations has been made possible. Also thanks to the invention of ber optics, new applications on interferometric sensor technology have been developed. The reason to utilize ber optics within interferometric sensors is mainly the advantages of these sensors compared to others based on open optics. Among the advantages of ber optic sensors are: more compact, lighter, support high temperatures, immunity to electromagnetic interference, have great potential for multiplexing; additionally, they have ability to be used in nondestructive testing and to be positioned in locations of difcult access. Fiber optic interferometers can be classied in two groups, those with two beams, and those with multiple beams. The more common two-beam sensors are of the types Michelson, Sagnac, Mach-Zehnder, and Fizeau, and among the sensors of multiple beams is the FabryPerot interferometer. In the study of ber optic applications there are two different techniques
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for interference pattern detection: homodyne and heterodyne. The homodyne detection has advantages compared to the heterodyne with respect to implementation and fabrication, that is it can detect signals of DC current, can be operated for point quadrature, and the signal output from the interferometer is linear within a range of small phase changes. However, the homodyne detection has also some disadvantages. The main disadvantages are: (a) Requires a high-intensity signal and the variation of ambient light can cause variations in measurement readings (b) The beam has to be directed normal to the plane of the measuring or testing surface, which makes difcult the measurement due to the complexity of alignment, particularly when the distance between the measuring surface and the interferometer is more than 100 mm.2 From the many applications of ber optic sensors with homodyne detection, one has been used for the measurement of surface temperatures, by mechanical excitation of the sample or the coherent source. Some works dealing with the implementation of homodyne interferometry for temperature measurement have found that several techniques exist for relating temperature to the reading output from the interferometer. Some of the utilized techniques relate the change of phase of the interference signal with the

modulated signal due to the temperature change on the measuring surface.3 Another technique relates group velocities from exciting waves, on the measuring surface, with respect to a temperature on a point where those groups of waves travel at higher or lower speed depending on the surface temperature. Temperature measurements on surfaces using this technique by exciting the sample have been used to obtain readings higher than 300 C.4,5 Also, there is a technique that relates the interference pattern with the changes in wavelength of the interference signal with respect to the temperature changes.6 In this work, we present a measuring technique, which relates the relative displacement between interference fringe patterns to the changes of temperature on a surface, using a ber optic Fizeau interferometer with homodyne detection. Physical Model Figure 1 shows the conguration of a Fizeau-type interferometer and a schematized fringe pattern acquisition, which depends on the temperature and the excitation (mechanical oscillation) on the measuring surface. As shown in Fig. 1, the light beam from a coherent source is directed towards a beam-splitter, where part of the light is reected back and is lost, the remaining is transmitted towards a partially reecting mirror,

Figure 1 Physical model for temperature measurement with ber optic Fizeau-type interferometer.

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Temperature sensor using Fizeau interferometer

where again the beam is divided and one part of it is transmitted and the other is reected to another beam-splitter. The beam transmitted to the partially reecting mirror is reected back to the testing surface, redirecting the beam back to the mirror where the beam is superimposed with the beam initially reected on the mirror. In such case when the testing surface does not undergo mechanical oscillation, the reected beam and the redirected beam from the testing surface are not superimposed because there is not relative displacement between their phases and therefore interference phenomenon does not exist. On the other hand, if a mechanical (sonic or ultrasonic) excitation is present on the testing surface, there will be a relative displacement, which in turns originates interference. The interference signal is directed towards a photodetector where it is converted into an analog voltage signal, which can be visualized in an oscilloscope. The interference pattern is shown at the lower part of Fig. 1. It can be identied as light fringes or number of peaks. Temperature on solid surfaces is a manifestation of kinetic energy intensity between molecules. This manifestation is through vibration at molecular level such that the higher the vibration intensity, the higher the temperature in the solid. This vibratory effect of molecular order is imperceptible on the solids surface. However, by using interferometry it was possible to discriminate those changes in vibration and the corresponding change in temperature. In a typical interferometer, when a light beam enters inside the surface, this beam would reect along with a reference beam from the same light source interfering each other. However, in this case, the molecular vibration does not have enough amplitude to get a change of phase of the incident beam with respect to the reference. By applying a small mechanical vibration on the surface, the reected beam is now out of phase with respect to the reference beam, then originating an interferometric signal. Therefore, small out-of-plane movements on the vibrating surface originate changes in the length of the Fizeau cavity, producing fringe patterns, which also are temperature dependent. The expression to calculate the intensity in the fringe pattern is given by the following equation:7 I = I1 + I2 + 2 I1 I2 cos , (1) where I1 and I2 are the intensities of the sensing and reference beams, and represents the total phase difference between both components; thus, the phase is directly related to the variation in the cavity length, and any change in the length of the optical
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path can result in a phase-shift term expressed as follows: = 4 n [Df(T)], (2)

where n is the reective index of the cavity, is the wavelength of the light source, and D is twice the value of the cavity length variation (displacement) and f(T) is a temperature function to be determined. Therefore, the output information of the displacement on vibrating surface can be obtained by the changes of length in the cavity, and the implicit phase difference of both, reference and reected signals. Here we assumed an air-lled cavity and normal incidence (n 1, is approximately its free-space value 0 and = 0). If the surface where the beam strikes constantly, with known amplitude and frequency, is subjected to an oscillation with respect to the partially reecting mirror a distance 0 /2, the interference fringes projected on the photodetector are displaced the equivalent of the thickness of a fringe, meaning a change of phase of 180 of the optical interference signal. Therefore, a fringe is equivalent to an optical path beam difference (OPD) of the wavelength of the coherent source 0 , but also equivalent to the relative positive displacement of 0 /2, on the reective surface, thus dened by Gangopadhyay:8 D= N0 , 2 (3)

where N is the number of fringes due to the periodic response. The fringe counting method can be utilized to determine D within several wavelengths. In the particular case of the Fizeau-type interferometer used in this study, 0 = 632.8 nm and a fringe is equivalent to a relative displacement of D = 316 nm, being this value the resolution to measure the relative displacement when N tends to the minimum count of fringes, which is one fringe. In the physical model of Fig. 1, the testing surface is reective and on the opposite side is absorbent. If the surface is mechanically excited and the temperature is controlled and gradually increased, then the changes in temperature can be related to the relative displacement observed on the interference pattern as follows: T =C N0 2 , (4)

where C is the proportionality constant to relate the relative displacement with temperature. This model performs the relationship of the fringe behavior based on the temperature with respect to the relative
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displacement D of the interference pattern through the thermometric proportional constant C. For this case f(T) affects only the length of the Fizeau cavity, as shown by the fringes in the interferograms. Therefore, this f(T) can be found by experimentation observing if the changes in relative displacement are effectively affected by temperature. Thus, we obtained an equation relating the change in phase with temperature by substituting Eq. 3 in Eq. 2 and Eq. 2 in Eq. 1: (5) I = I1 + I2 + 2 I1 I2 cos[2 Nf (T)]. It can be demonstrated that this f(T) is proportional to the constant C of Eq. 4 formulated as a solution. Fringes resulting from the interference patterns show that white fringes are the peaks of the signal and black fringes are the valleys. On the other hand, one technique, which we could use to count the number of fringes in a given period, consists in counting the number of zero crossings of the interference pattern signal, and dividing this number by 2. Therefore, the proposed equation to nd the fringe number is: N = Number of Zero crossings/2. (6)

counting and the reference temperatures, the relative displacement of each interference pattern was directly associated to temperature as presented in Eq. 4 of the physical model.

Experimental Model The integration of the Fizeau-type ber tip interferometer (FTI) to measure surface temperature consists of placing the FTI in normal direction to the plane of the measuring surface as shown in Fig. 2. The FTI is placed in such a form that the incident and reected beams are in the center positions of the surface or specimen of test where the temperature measurement is desired. When the surface on the test specimen is with a constant frequency at constant temperature, the signal of the incident beam and the reected beam are superimposed, originating the interference signal; this interference is detected on the photodetector and is converted into an analog voltage signal to be visualized in an oscilloscope. This signal in the oscilloscope allows to evaluate the fringe number, N, and, utilizing Eq. 2, a proportional ratio to obtain temperature indirectly is obtained and the sensor can be calibrated. The criterion used for fringe counting consists in counting the peaks or maxima of light intensity, within time interval in which the exciting signal travels a full period, in other words, to determine the number of peaks displayed in the oscilloscope within a complete period of the excitation signal.8,11 Finally, the fringe number is related with the temperature on the sample. Calibration thus consists on relating changes of temperature with changes of interference patterns obtained with experimental tests. In order to carry out these tests a diaphragm-type oscillator is used, where one side of the surface on the diaphragm is opaque and the other side is reecting. The interferometric beam is incident at the reecting side, and on the opaque side heat is supplied in the form of convection and radiation by a variable-intensity incandescent lamp. Then the oscillator is fed with a sinusoidal signal, with a frequency in the range from 4 to 9 kHz, in steps of 1 kHz, and an initial temperature of 31.0 C, and then the interference signals are recorded in the oscilloscope. The procedure is repeated for each of the following temperatures on the testing surface: 35.0, 40.0, 45.0, and 50.0 C. With the development of these tests an excitation frequency is selected in order to present better visualization of the interference pattern with respect to the temperatures. Once the frequencies are selected,
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Thus, on the obtained interferograms, the criterion utilized for fringe counting consists on counting the number of times the interference signal crosses the abscissas axis or the number of times that the amplitude of the interference signal becomes zero in a period equal to the time that the excitation signal completes a full cycle. A computer program was written for this purpose and it provides a graphic scheme of a series of alternating fringes (bright and black) as an interpretation of the interference pattern. In another fringe processing technique, Munoz Rodrguez and Rodrguez-Vera9 developed a virtual optical method for image encryption and decryption obtained by computer processes based on optical decryption. With this full-eld technique, a grating deformed according to a reected intensity map is shown as a fringe pattern with carrier fringes. The decryption process is performed by a phase recovery method. The computational algorithms based on optical operations for this technique are presented in an earlier work.10 In the present work, we do not carry out light intensity maps, because the measurement is punctual rather than full eld, and therefore no grey-level brightness is represented. Moreover, we have found that the zero crossings (dark-white) fringe counting technique, explained above, is enough to relate temperature changes to fringe displacements. With this criterion of fringe
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Temperature sensor using Fizeau interferometer

Figure 2 Physical model to measure temperature with Fizeau-type ber interferometer.

ordinate pair values of temperature corresponding to the fringe numbers are obtained. These values are represented on a plot where the ordinate axis is represented by the temperature values and the abscise axis by the values of fringe number and lasers wavelength. A linear regression is applied to the ordinate pairs to obtain an equation of the type T = c1 ci x, where T represents temperature, constants c1 and c2 are constants for the polynomial adjustment of the trigonometric ratio, and x is the relative displacement of the interference pattern as a function of the fringe number.

Experimental setup

The Fizeau-type interferometer used in this work is integrated by a coherent light source, that is HeNe laser of 633 nm with a power of 17 mW; it has four ber optic couplers, one bi-conic coupler, one graded index (GRIN) lens, and 4 m of monomodal optical ber. The signal acquisition equipment for the interference signal is a National Instruments NI-PXI 1050 system with two acquisition cards for oscilloscope
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with two sampling channels of 2 GS/s. The reference temperature measurement is carried out with signal acquisition equipment for temperature NI-Daq-Pat 6020, a thermocouple type T gauge 36 with measurement uncertainty of 0.5 C. The software used with the equipment is Lab View V8.2, running in a PC. The equipment to excite the oscillators surface is integrated by a function generator BK PRECISION, model 4017A, with operating range of 0.1 Hz to 100 MHz, and ve-digit resolution. The equipment for temperature control is integrated by an incandescent lamp, that is 50 W halogen bulb powered through a variac from 0 to 110 V. Finally, the setup with the surface where the temperature measurement is required is a high-frequency sonic oscillator, that is tweeter, with frequency response of 120 kHz. It is worth to mention that the excitation surface was modied due to the need of a highly reecting surface for beam reection on one side and on the other side opaque surface for absorbing the heat needed for temperature increase on the oscillator, in such a way that the oscillators front is highly reective and opaque on the back.
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The laser beam is coupled to an optical ber that directs the laser light towards a beam-splitter, where part of the light is reected and part is transmitted. The reected light is directed by a ber optic leg towards an index matching uid to avoid nondesirable reections. The transmitted light beam is directed, in another ber optic leg, towards the GRIN lens, where part of the light is reected and part is transmitted. The GRIN lens has the ability to couple again the beam reected by the measurement surface towards the ber optic leg. Then the beam initially reected in the lens and the beam reected by the surface are retransmitted in the same ber optic leg towards the beam-splitter, where both beams are dissected in a third ber optic leg towards the photodetector, where the interference signal is measured and visualized in the acquisition system NI-PXI 1050.

Results Thirty tests were carried out in order to observe the behavior of the interference pattern from the interferometer as a function of temperature. Those tests were grouped in sets of ve. The rst set of tests was carried out under excitation frequency of 4 kHz and temperatures on the measurement surface of 31, 35, 40, 45, and 50.0 C. The second set was carried out under the same temperature conditions as before but with an excitation frequency of 5 kHz. The next

four sets of tests were carried out under the same temperature conditions of previous sets of tests, but with excitation frequencies of 6, 7, 8, and 9 kHz, respectively. The results showed that the best visualization of the interference pattern is found when using an excitation frequency of 9 kHz. Therefore, in this work, the set of ve tests corresponding to surface temperatures of 31, 35, 40, 45, and 50 C, with an excitation frequency of 9 kHz, is presented. The results of test number one, corresponding to the temperature of 31.0 C and excitation frequency of 9 kHz, are presented in Fig. 3, showing a complete period of the sinusoidal signal of the applied excitation on the oscillators surface, and the response of the interference pattern corresponding to the temperature of 31.0 C. The gure shows the number of times the interference signal crosses by zero, in this case 24. Applying the equation for fringe counting criteria, the number of fringes for this particular experiment is 12. In addition, the bottom part of Fig. 3 shows a series of alternating fringes (bright and black) which indicates that for each appearing peak, from left to right on the interference signal, there is a corresponding bright fringe. In addition, there is a corresponding black fringe for each valley. Thus, the interference pattern of test number one has 12 bright fringes or 12 peaks per cycle of vibration. There are four peaks

Figure 3 Plot of the interference pattern at 9.0 kHz and a temperature of 31.0 C.

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Temperature sensor using Fizeau interferometer

Figure 4 Plot of the interference pattern at 9.0 kHz and a temperature of 35 C.

Figure 5 Plot of the interference pattern at 9.0 kHz and a temperature of 40.0 C.

not well dened which are considered as aberrations of the signal. The results of test numbers twove corresponding to temperatures of 35.0, 40.0. 45.0, and 50.0 C are presented in Figs. 47.
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The fringe counting for test number two presented in Fig. 4 indicates that for each cycle of the sinusoidal signal, 10 well-dened peaks are counted; ve peaks not well dened are considered signal aberrations. In test number three presented in Fig. 5, for
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Figure 6 Plot of the interference pattern at 9.0 kHz and a temperature of 45.0 C.

Figure 7 Plot of the interference pattern at 9.0 kHz and a temperature of 50.0 C.

each completed cycle of the sinusoidal signal, eight well-dened peaks are counted and six not welldened peaks were considered aberrations. In test
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number four whose results are presented in Fig. 6, for each completed cycle of the sinusoidal signal, seven well-dened peaks are counted and eight not
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Temperature sensor using Fizeau interferometer

Table 1 Conditions for interferometry tests Test no. 1 2 3 4 5 0 [kHz] 9 9 9 9 9 Tr [ C] 31.0 35.0 40.0 45.0 50.0

N 12 10 8 7 5

D = (N0 )/2 nm 3798.0 3165.0 2532.0 2215.5 1582.5

where the characteristic constants of the thermometry polynomial are: c1 = 63.6 and c2 = 0.0088. The interferometry technique has applicability in the measurement of temperature because it is noninvasive. With the actual temperature measurement system based on ber optic interferometry sensing we could get resolutions of only 2.5 C. Conclusions In this study, we could obtain responses of the interferometer with oscillating frequencies for the reecting surface from 4 to 9 kHz. The implemented model relates the relative displacement D of the interference pattern with respect to the surface temperature. This relationship is given by a thermometric proportional constant C, such that the temperature equals to the relative displacement. Series of ve experiments were carried out in order to nd the value of the constant C. The surface temperature was xed to 31 C and then incremented in steps of 5 C until reaching a threshold of 50 C. We observed through these experiments that for each temperature, the interference pattern changes its relative displacement corresponding to a fringe succession such that the average displacement per fringe means a change in temperature by 5 C. The fringe counting of the interference pattern was related to temperature, and the changes in the interference pattern corresponding also to changes in temperature on the reecting surface were identied. The resolution obtained until the moment was of 5 C and it was observed that the higher the frequency the lower the uncertainty. Finally, a maximum frequency of 9 kHz was considered in this study. References
1. Hetch, E., Optica, 3a Edition, Pearson Addison Wesley, Spain (2000). 2. Chapman, M., Heterodyne and Homodyne Interferometry, Renishaw Apply Innovation, Renishaw, Gloucestershire, UK (2002). 3. Gahler, C., Friedrich, S., Miles, R.O., and Melchior, H., Fiber Optic Temperature Sensor using Sampled Homodyne Detection, Applied Optics 30(21):29382940 (1991). 4. Vedantham, V., In-Situ Temperature and Thickness Characterization for Silicon Wafers Undergoing Thermal Annealing, MSc Thesis, Texas A&M University, USA (2003). 5. Baltazar-Lopez, M.E., Implementation and Application of a Fizeau-Based Fiber Tip Interferometer, Rodriguez-Vera, R., and

well-dened peaks were considered aberration of the signal. Finally, in test number ve, whose results are plotted in Fig. 7, for each completed cycle of the sinusoidal signal, ve well-dened peaks are counted and four not well-dened peaks were considered aberrations of the signal. The test conditions to measure temperature with homodyne interferometry are listed in Table 1. The test number is listed in the rst column, on the second column are listed the values of excitation frequency, in the third column are listed the values of temperature on the reference surface, in the fourth column are the number of fringes counted corresponding to each test, and nally, the fth column lists the values of relative displacement of the interference pattern. From the results presented in Table 1, it can be observed that there is a relationship between reference temperature and the fringe number or relative displacement. Therefore, the behavior of temperature versus relative displacement can be presented in a plot as shown in Fig. 8. From Fig. 8, it can be observed that temperature has a linear trend, as mentioned in the experimental model, and the characteristic equation for temperature from the Fizeau-type ber optic interferometric sensor can be expressed as follows: T = (63.6 2.5)C 0.0088D,

Figure 8 Behavior of temperature with change of relative displacement of the interference pattern.

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Mendoza-Santoyo, F., (eds), Eighth International Symposium on Laser Metrology, Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 5776, pp. 355365 (2005). 6. Wong, A.C.L., Childs, P.A., and Peng, G.-D., Multiplexed Fibre Fizeau Interferometer and Fibre Bragg Grating Sensor System for Simultaneous Measurement of Quasi-Static Strain and Temperature using Discrete Wavelet Transform, Measurement Science & Technology 17:384392 (2006). 7. Beard, P.C., and Mills, T.N., Extrinsic Optical-Fiber Ultrasound Sensor using a Thin Polymer Film as a Low-Finesse Fabry-Perot Interferometer, Applied Optics. 35(4):663675 (1996). 8. Gangopadhyay, T.K., Non Contact Vibration Measurement Based on an Extrinsic Fabry-Perot

Interferometer Implemented using Arrays of Single Mode Fibers, Measurement Science & Technology 15:911917 (2004). 9. Munoz-Rodrguez, J.A., and Rodrguez-Vera, R., Image Encryption Based on a Grating Generated by a Reection Intensity Map, Journal of Modern Optics 52(10):13851395 (2005). 10. Munoz-Rodrguez, J.A., and Rodrguez-Vera, R., Image Encryption based on Moire Pattern Performed by Computational Algorithms, Optics Communications 236:295301 (2004). 11. Sathitanon, N., and Pullteap, S., A Fiber Optic Interferometric Sensor for Dynamic Measurement, International Journal of Computer Science and Engineering 2(2):6366 (2008).

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