New Parameters Extracted from Tilted Fiber Bragg Grating Spectra for the Determination of the Refractive Index and Cut-Off Wavelength

Tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG) is a very popular fiber optic element that is used as a sensor for various physical quantities. The calculation of the refractive index of a substance surrounding the TFBG is based on its spectrum demodulation, which consists of determining a certain parameter that is correlated with the sought quantity. The most commonly used parameter is the area created by the maxima and minima of the cladding mode resonances. In this article, we propose a new group of methods, which are based on calculating the parameters related to the spectrum differences between the local average values in the range of occurrence of the cladding modes. The basic parameter used in this group of methods is the mean absolute deviation from the local mean, which is characterized by the best linearity among the considered group of methods. The calculated parameters, in their cumulative form, can also be used to determine the cut-off wavelength, which can also indirectly indicate the refractive index value. The proposed approaches were compared, in terms of measurement resolution, to the most commonly used methods, such as the cladding modes’ envelope area and the spectral contour lengths.