Interferometric system based on SS-OCT scheme applied to the measurement of distances of industrial interest

E. N. MOREL; NELIDA RUSSO; J. R. TORGA; RICARDO DUCHOWICZ

OPTICAL ENGINEERING

SPIE-SOC PHOTOPTICAL INSTRUMENTATION ENGINEERS

Año: 2016

0091-3286

In this paper, we used an interferometric technique based on typical OCT schemes for measuring distances of industrial interest. The system employed as light source a tunable erbium doped fiber laser of ~20 pm bandwidth with a tuning range of the spectral emission between 1520 and 1570 nm. It has a sufficiently long coherence length to enable long depth range imaging. A set of fiber Bragg gratings was used as a self-calibration method, which has the advantage of being a passive system that requires no additional electronic devices. The proposed configuration and the coherence length of the laser, enlarges the range of maximum distances that can be measured with the common OCT configuration, maintaining a good axial resolution. A measuring range slightly greater than 17 cm was determined. The system performance was evaluated by studying the repeatability and axial resolution of the results when the same optical path difference was measured. Additionally, the thickness of a semitransparent medium was also measured.