Wide absorption spectrum measuring methods by DFB-LDs in water vapor detection system

Abstract

Two measuring methods of the wide absorption spectrum by distributed feedback laser diodes (DFB-LDs) are presented in detecting the water vapor absorption line. One is the subsection scanning method, and it takes advantage of the wide spectrum tuning range by the temperature modulation and fast spectrum tuning speed by current modulation. Specifically, this method is realized by dividing a target spectral region into several sections which correspond to the specific temperature of DFB-LD, scanning every section by current modulation for hundreds times, and averaging the data to raise the signal to noise ratio (SNR), then combining all sections to get the whole spectrum. An accuracy of 10 ppmv had been obtained in the measurement of water vapor with a 10-cm path length by this method. Another is data fitting method, based on the absorption line-shape function; the absorption line can be described by fitting with partial measured data. The fitting absorption line was fitted well with the measured data, and the square of correlation coefficient (R-square) was no less than 0.99.