Recently, the joint research team from Anhui Key Laboratory of Mine Intelligent Equipment and Technology, School of Electronic Engineering and Intelligent Manufacturing, Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, School of Electrical and Photoelectronic Engineering, West Anhui University published an academic papers Parameter-tuning stochastic resonance as a tool to enhance wavelength modulation spectroscopy using a dense overlapped spot pattern multi-pass cell.

Introduction

The laser absorption spectroscopy technology has been demonstrated in many applications, such as air quality monitoring, industrial process control, and medical diagnostic. The precision of the measurement is important to those applications. Although laser absorption spectroscopy has many advantages in sensitive detection, it still needs a long optical path length and specialmeasurement technology for detecting a very trace substance, with a high detection sensitivity . For those purposes, a multi-pass cell with a long optical path is usually applied to enhance the absorption signal. However, the unexpected interference fringe, thermal noise, shot noise, electrical noise and white noise, often occur in absorption signals and seriously spoil the detection precision. Those problems are common for laser absorption spectroscopy when using dense overlapped spot pattern multi-pass cell. Therefore, it is of great significance to effectively extract weak photoelectric absorption signals from a strong noise background.

Several methods are proposed to eliminate the negative influence of the noise. The traditional weak periodic signal processing methods mainly include time average method, filtering method,

and correlation analysis method.

①The signal with a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be obtained by time average method, so the standard deviation of noise can be reduced and the signal quality can be improved. Nevertheless, the strong noise background cannot be fully eliminated by this method.

②The signal filters based on hardware and software are widely used for noise reduction, the characteristic of which is narrow bandwidth. In practical application, the desired signal and noise usually have a continuous power spectrum and wide bandwidth, but it is relatively difficult to manufacture a filter that matches the bandwidth of the signal to remove the noise. If the bandwidth of the filter is very small, the noise will be greatly attenuated. However, this may destroy the desired signal.

③The correlation detection method is used to remove the noise by the autocorrelation of the periodic signal. Its essence is to establish a very narrow bandwidth filter to filter out the noise, the frequency of which is different from that of the signal. Compared with other weak periodic signal detection methods mentioned above, the advantage of the parameter-tuning stochastic resonance (SR) method is apparent. Even if the noise and signal have the same frequency, as long as they reach the optimal resonance matching, the SR method can convert part of the noise energy into the signal energy to suppress the noise and enhance the signal.

In this work, the SR method is applied to the wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS) by using the dense overlapped spot pattern multi-pass cell. first, the numerical calculation will be implemented to find the suitable parameters and evaluate the performance of the optimal SR system, and then it is verified that the SR method can effectively enhance the WMS signal by the experiments.

A schematic diagram of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. HealthyPhoton Technology Co., Ltd. provides a lock-in amplifier (HPLIA), which is used for demodulation of absorption signal from the photodetector at the frequency of second harmonic signal 2f (where f =6 KHz is the modulation frequency of the sine wave). The time constant of the lock-in amplifier is set to 1 ms. The demodulated signal is subsequently digitalized by a DAQ card and displayed on a computer.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of experimental device of measurement.

Healthy Photon，lock-in amplifier HPLIA

Fig. 2. 2f SR signal and 2f time average signal.

Conclusion

The parameter-tuning stochastic resonance (SR) method can convert part of the noise energy into the signal energy to suppress the noise and amplify the signal, comparing with traditional weak periodic signal detection methods (e.g., time average method, filtering method, and correlation analysis method). In this work, the numerical calculation is conducted to find the optimal resonance parameters for applying the SR method to the wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS). Under the stochastic resonance state, the peak value of 2f signal (a constant concentration of CH4∼20 ppm) is effectively amplified to ∼0.0863 V, which is 3.8 times as much as the peak value of 4000-time average signal (∼0.0231 V). Although the standard deviation also increases from ∼0.0015 V(1σ) to ∼0.003 V(1σ), the SNR can be improved by 1.83 times (from ∼25.9 to ∼15.8) correspondingly. A linear spectral response of SR 2f signal peak value to raw 2f signal peak value is obtained. It suggests that the SR method is effective for enhancing photoelectric signal under strong noise background.

Reference:

Parameter-tuning stochastic resonance as a tool to enhance wavelength modulation spectroscopy using a dense overlapped spot pattern multi-pass cell, Optics Express 32010

https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.465629