Harnessing speckle optical fiber sensors through high-frequency interrogation with an event-based camera.

Despite their extreme sensitivity, speckle-based fiber optical sensors are typically limited by the camera frame rate and dynamic range. In this context, recent developments in event-based sensors make them a promising and affordable tool for high-speed interrogation for such class of sensors, offering a low-latency approach to detecting dynamic changes in illumination patterns, well-suited for fast interrogation with frequency response up to the MHz range. In this manuscript, we investigate the potential of using an event-based vision sensor (EVS) as an interrogator for a speckle-based optical fiber sensor operating at 532nm to detect vibrations induced by an off-the-shelf sound speaker. In contact with the fiber, these vibrations induce dynamic changes in the speckle pattern, which are tracked by the EVS and processed to construct temporal frames with timestamps below 100 μs. Approximating the differential operator of the deformation in the linear regime, we show a successful reconstruction of the acoustic signal for two illustrative case studies: i)a single-frequency signal at 1.2 KHz and ii)a linear ramp between 300 Hz to 2.5 kHz. The results demonstrate the ability to accurately identify not only the fundamental frequencies but also their harmonics generated by the speaker up to 5 KHz, paving an innovative path to harness the potential of speckle-based sensors in multiple scenarios of optical metrology and dynamic sensing applications.