Smart Fibres is recognised as the leading supplier of Fibre Bragg Grating interrogators for demanding, real world environments. With 20 years of experience pioneering optical fibre sensing in industrial applications such as aerospace, oil & gas and wind energy, we understand the critical requirements of our markets and we have developed a range of instruments that deliver to these requirements.
Our interrogators are designed around our SmartLaserTM core technology platform of an electrically tuneable laser controlled by our proprietary, high-speed electronic drive circuit. The result is an unrivalled combination of resolution (40fm) and accuracy (1pm) over a broad operating temperature range (up to -20/+60C) which encompasses the needs of our markets. In our experience, competing instruments based on spectrometer or swept laser platforms do not deliver this combined performance set.
The active optical elements within our SmartLaserTM core are contained in a tiny monolithic chip, just a few millimetres long. All other components are passive optical and electronic components. This leads to a very robust instrument, more tolerant of thermal and mechanical influences than instruments based on spectrometer or swept laser platforms. This robustness has been demonstrated through military standard qualification tests, numerous successful flight trials on military and civil aircraft, long-term operational use on military UAVs and within the spinning rotors of wind turbines, and a high predicted MTBF (e.g. 65 years for one variant).
Our interrogators are designed using 100% commercial-off the shelf components with no custom components (apart from the enclosure). That ensures we can guarantee long-term product availability and we can drive competitive sourcing to keep our build costs low. This low cost base supports our pricing strategy to stimulate volume market uptake, rather than to make a quick win on each individual instrument sale.