Real-Time Spectrum Monitoring of Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor using I-MON USB and LabVIEW

 

 

Real-Time Spectrum Monitoring of Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor using I-MON USB and LabVIEW.  A university needed a custom LabVIEW application that could acquire data from a Ibsen Photonics I-Mon USB Interrogation Monitor.  The university had some existing LabVIEW software, however it was hard to understand, difficult to maintain, and didn't save data to file fast enough.  The university needed the software re-written so they could easily incorporate some of the algorithms they were developing.  They also needed the software to save data quickly and have a way to mange the large amount of data the software would generate.  The data needed to be stored an a file that could be read and analyzed by MATLAB.

We developed custom LabVIEW software that interfaces with the I-MON hardware and saved all the data acquired from the hardware efficiently.  

 

 

We rewrote the software so it was easy to understand and easy to maintain.  We used a producer-consumer architecture and Object Oriented design to make the software easy to understand and maintain.  Using these design concepts, adding functionality at a later time would be possible.  This allowed the software to change as new research was completed.  

 

 

 

The main screen of the software was easy to use and intuitive.  The operator had tabs they could select that contained graphs of the data they were interested in.  Additional graphs could be added at a later time.  The software logged data as a binary file to be read with MATLAB for analysis.   Binary files were used because that is the fastest file format for logging data.  The software had a feature that monitored the size of the data file.  If the file size was over a user specified limit the software would create a new file.  This kept the file size to a manageable level.

 

 

The setup dialog contained all the settings for the software.  File settings, hardware setup, and analysis settings were included.

 

 

The Real-Time Spectrum Monitoring of Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor using I-MON USB and LabVIEW software met the university's requirements.  The software was easy to use and maintain because it was written using proven LabVIEW design patterns.  This made adding features at a later time possible.  This was important because of the research the university was conducting.  They were learning new capabilities and process and the ability to add new features was important.

 

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