Demodulating Optical Wireless Communication of FBG Sensing with Turbulence-Caused Noise by Stacked Denoising Autoencoders and the Deep Belief Network

Free-space optics communication (FSO) can be used as a transmission medium for fiber optic sensing signals to make fiber optic sensing easier to implement; however, interference with the sensing signals caused by the optical turbulence and scattering of airborne particles in the FSO path is a potential problem. This work aims to deep denoise sensed signals from fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors based on FSO link transmission using advanced denoising deep learning techniques, such as stacked denoising autoencoders (SDAE). Furthermore, it will demodulate the sensed wavelength of FBGs by applying the deep belief network (DBN) technique. This is the first time the real FBG sensing experiment has utilized the actual noise interference caused by the environmental turbulence from an FSO link rather than adding noise through numerical processing. Consequently, the spectrum of the FBG sensors is clearly modulated by the noise and the issue with peak power variation. This complicates the determination of the center wavelengths of multiple stacked FBG spectra, requiring the use of machine learning techniques to predict these wavelengths. The results indicate that SDAE is efficient in denoising from the FBG spectrum, and DBN is effective in demodulating the central wavelength of the overlapped FBG spectrum. Thus, it is beneficial to implement an FSO link-based FBG sensing system in adverse weather conditions or atmospheric turbulence.