High stability multiplexed fibre interferometer and its application on absolute displacement measurement and on-line surface metrology

We propose a self-reference multiplexed fiber interferometer (MFI) by using a tunable laser and fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The optical measurement system multiplexes two Michelson fiber interferometers with shared optical path in the main part of optical system. One fiber optic interferometer is used as a reference interferometer to monitor and control the high accuracy of the measurement system under environmental perturbations. The other is used as a measurement interferometer to obtain information from the target. An active phase tracking homodyne (APTH) technique is applied for signal processing to achieve high resolution. MFI can be utilized for high precision absolute displacement measurement with different combination of wavelengths from the tunable laser. By means of Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) technique, MFI is also capable of realizing on-line surface measurement, in which traditional stylus scanning is replaced by spatial light-wave scanning so as to greatly improve the measurement speed and robustness.