A Novel PMDI Fiber Optic Hydrophone Incorporating IOC-Based Phase Modulator

Fiber-optic hydrophone (FOH) has significant potential in many applications of hydroacoustic sensing and underwater communication. A novel path-matched differential interferometer fiber optic hydrophone (PMDI-FOH) approach incorporating an integrated-optic component (IOC) is presented in this paper. It is presented to meet the demands for high-quality dynamic measurements, which solves the problems with the conventional homodyne detection system’s low modulation frequency. The IOC functions as a phase-generated carrier (PGC) component. The scheme is investigated both in theory and experiments. The theoretical and experimental results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. It achieves a high SNR of up to 20.29 dB demodulations. The proposed system is cost-effective and has excellent potential in building next-generation underwater sensing and communication networks.