Abstract
To reduce the dispersion mismatch effect on FMCW measurements, a method of eliminating dispersion mismatch by the forward and reverse tuning of an external cavity tunable laser is proposed. When the external cavity tunable laser is combined with an optical fiber path, the system produces a dispersion mismatch effect, which is manifested as peak broadening and shifting of the target signal. The ranging value changes with the increase in the tuning bandwidth, resulting in measurement instability. To solve this problem, the paper studies the system dispersion mismatch characteristics of the external cavity tunable laser in forward and reverse tuning. The results show that the dispersion trend is a symmetrical distribution of the forward and reverse tuning. The paper establishes the dispersion mismatch model of the forward and reverse tuning system. On this basis, dispersion cancellation is realized by forward and reverse tuning of the external cavity laser. This method does not require calibration of the dispersion coefficient of the system in advance nor cyclic iterative compensation. A single measurement can complete the dispersion compensation for the system, which provides a way to improve the efficiency of dispersion compensation.
The method of laser FMCW measurement has many advantages, such as no blind area and low SNR detectio
To eliminate the dispersion mismatch effect of the system, Zeb W. Barber analyzed the influence of optical fiber dispersion of the reference interferometer on ranging in the active chirp linearization method. The dispersion causes the beat frequency of the reference interferometer to change with the frequency modulation bandwidth, which leads to a change in the frequency modulation slope, widens the target spectrum peak and limits further improvement in the extent of the range. To solve the dispersion problem, Barber proposed introducing the chirp frequency into the beat frequency of the reference interferometer to counteract the dispersion effect
The above method requires calibration of the dispersion coefficient or iterative compensation in advance. In this paper, by studying the dispersion law of the measurement system, the method of dispersion cancellation by forward and reverse tuning is proposed. It can avoid estimation of the dispersion coefficient of the system in advance or the iterative compensation process, which can improve the compensation efficiency.
Ideally, the laser frequency performs linear tuning, and the target distance is calculated by detecting the beat frequency signal generated by the local and transmitted path light. In practice, it is difficult for lasers to achieve perfect linear tuning, which leads to broadening of the target spectrum. To eliminate this effect, an auxiliary interferometer is constructed for tuning the nonlinear correction. A structure diagram of the optical path is shown in

Fig. 1 Optical path diagram of laser FMCW measurement
图1 激光FMCW测量系统光路结构图
The external cavity laser is tuned linearly. The output light is divided into two channels after passing through the optical isolator and coupler 1. Part of the light passes through coupler 2. It then returns to form the beat signal with the local path light at balanced detector A. The rest of the light passes through coupler 3. It then passes through the fiber-optic Mach-Zehnder interferometer with an unequal arm length to form the auxiliary interferometer beat signal on balanced detector B. The measured beat signal is synchronously sampled by the zero-amplitude crossing point of the auxiliary interferometer signal. Then, the sampled signal is changed to a sine signal, and the frequency of the sampled signal can be calculated by a Fourier transform. The target distance is calculated by combining the optical path length of the auxiliary interferometer.
The sampled signa
, , | (1) |
where and are the time delays of the measurement and auxiliary interferometers, respectively. When the time delay of the auxiliary interferometer is known by calibration, the optical path of the target can be obtained by FFT of the sampled signal.
In practice, due to the use of a broadband tuning light source, it is necessary to consider the influence of optical fiber dispersio
, | (2) |
where
, | (3) |
where denotes the fiber length of the auxiliary interferometer and is the slope of the linear tuning. , and denotes the group velocity. The dispersion coefficient is . refers to an error of order .
After the measurement signal is resampled by the signal clock of the auxiliary interferometer, the measurement beat frequency is derived as follows.
The measurement optical path is primarily in air, and the dispersion coefficient of air can be ignored. Therefore, the ratio of the time delay by the measurement and auxiliary interferometer can be expressed as Eq. 4:
. | (4) |
Because , the higher-order terms in Eq. 4 can be ignored with a negligible loss in accuracy. The higher-order terms of Eq. 4 are denoted by .
Here,
, | (5) |
where denotes the time delayed variation on the auxiliary interferometer caused by the fiber dispersion effect. After deducing the above process, the sampled signal is as follow
If ,
, | (6) |
If ,
, | (7) |
where, , and represent the transmitted light, local light power and heterodyne interference efficiency, respectively.
To reduce the dispersion effect, we proposed a method of dispersion cancellation by forward and reverse tuning. The principle is as follows.
The Hilbert transfor
, | (8) |
where . Use Eq. (8) to reconstruct the measured signal:
. | (9) |
Then, Eq. (9) is the measured signal after eliminating the influence of dispersion, and the target distance can be obtained by further Chirp
The external cavity laser was set to triangle wave tuning mode. It tuned from 1552 nm to 1542 nm (corresponding to forward tuning) and from 1552 nm to 1562 nm (corresponding to reverse tuning). The output power and tuning speed of the laser were 1.5 mW and 100 nm/s, respectively. The optical path of the auxiliary interferometer was 220 m. The target was placed on an air flotation optical platform. The acquired time domain measured signal diagram is shown in

Fig. 2 Time domain of the measured signal
图 2 测量信号时域图

Fig. 3 Frequency domain of the measured signal
图3 测量信号频域图
To study the dispersion effect of the measurement system, the measured signal formed by forward and reverse tuning of the laser was divided into five sections. Then, the ChirpZ transformation was carried out for each section of the signal, and the corresponding distance was calculated. The results are shown in

Fig. 4 Ranging value of the measured signal in different sections
图4 测量信号不同段的测距值
A Hilbert transform was used to extract the phase of the measured signal under the conditions of forward and reverse tuning. Then, the phase was unwrapped and fitted linearly.

Fig. 5 Residual phase by forward tuning
图5 正向调谐的残余相位

Fig. 6 Residual phase by reverse tuning
图6 反向调谐的残余相位

Fig. 7 Residual phase of dispersion cancellation by forward and reverse tuning
图7 正反向调谐色散对消后的残余相位
The measured signal was reconstructed by the phase of dispersion cancellation and divided into five sections. Then, the target distance of each section was extracted by the ChirpZ transform. The results are shown in

Fig. 8 Ranging value under the condition of forward and reverse tuning and after dispersion cancellation
图8 正反向调谐色散对消后的测距值
The whole measured signal after dispersion cancellation was extracted by the ChirpZ transform. The distance profile of the target peak before and after dispersion cancellation is shown in

Fig. 9 The distance profile of the target peak before and after dispersion cancellation
图9 系统色散对消前后的目标距离峰轮廓
In this paper, an external cavity tunable laser FMCW system is constructed. The theoretical model of dispersion mismatch is established. The theoretical and experimental results show that the beat frequency of the measured signal changes with time due to dispersion, which leads to the distortion of the target spectrum peak profile and measurement instability. To reduce the influence of dispersion, a dispersion mismatch model of the forward and reverse tuning of the external cavity laser is established. It is found that the dispersion has symmetry under forward and reverse tuning. According to this characteristic, dispersion cancellation is realized by summing and averaging the phases of the forward and reverse tuned signals. The advantage of this method is that it does not require estimation of the dispersion coefficient nor the carrying out of iterative compensation. The measurement is completed by a single compensation, which can improve the efficiency of the dispersion compensation.
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