Continuous Liquid-Level Sensor Based on a Long-Period Grating and Microwave Photonics Filtering Techniques

A fiber optic liquid-level sensor based on a long period grating (LPG) is proposed and experimentally validated. The principle of operation is based on a technique used to analyze microwave photonics filters. A 4-cm-long LPG cascaded with a high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating is employed to achieve a continuous liquid-level sensor. The measurements have been performed using a modulator and a photo-detector with a modest bandwidth of less than 500 MHz, showing a sensitivity of -12.71 dB/cm and a standard deviation of 0.52 dB. One of the significant advantages of such sensing structure is that it is based on low-bandwidth radio frequency and off-the-shelf photonic components. In addition, the simple proposed scheme presents good repeatable performance and proves to be intrinsically robust against environmental changes, stable, and easy to reconfigure.