LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range

Junling Hu; Sa Zhang; Meiyu Cai; Mingjian Ma; Shuguang Li; Hailiang Chen; Sigang Yang

doi:10.1038/s41377-025-02008-4

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LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range

Original Articles

- LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range
- LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range
- Light: Science & Applications 2025年14卷第12期页码：4154-4166
- Affiliations：
  
  1.State Key Laboratory of Metastable Materials Science & Technology and Key Laboratory for Microstructural Material Physics of Hebei Province, School of Science, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao 066004, China
  2.Hebei Key Laboratory of Advanced Laser Technology and Equipment, Tianjin 300401, China
  3.Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNList), Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
- Author bio：
  
  Hailiang Chen (hlchen@ysu.edu.cn)
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1038/s41377-025-02008-4
  中图分类号：
- 收稿：2025-04-11，
  
  修回：2025-08-09，
  
  录用：2025-08-12，
  
  网络出版：2025-12-01，
  
  纸质出版：2025-12-31
- Accepted：
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Junling Hu, Sa Zhang, Meiyu Cai, 等. LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range[J]. Light: Science & Applications, 2025,14(12):4154-4166.

Hu, J. L. et al. LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 4154-4166 (2025).
Junling Hu, Sa Zhang, Meiyu Cai, 等. LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range[J]. Light: Science & Applications, 2025,14(12):4154-4166. DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02008-4.

Hu, J. L. et al. LSTM-assisted optical fiber interferometric sensing: breaking the limitation of free spectral range. Light: Science & Applications, 14, 4154-4166 (2025). DOI： 10.1038/s41377-025-02008-4.

摘要

Abstract

Optical fiber interferometric sensors are of great importance in chemistry

biology

and medicine disciplines owing to high-sensitivity and high-quality factor. However

due to the limitation of free spectral range

the inherent trade-off between wide measurement range and high sensitivity poses a persistent challenge in interference sensor development

which has fundamentally hindered their widespread adoption in precision measurement applications. In this work

a long short-term memory neural network is utilized in a Mach-Zehnder interference-based refractive index sensor to break the free spectral range limitation. Unique gating mechanism in long short-term memory neural network enables it to efficiently process long-term dependent sequence information

such as interference spectrum

avoiding the need for complex spectral signal analysis. A one-to-one mapping relationship i

s established between the interference spectrum and refractive index with root mean square error of 3.029 × 10

−4

and a coefficient of determination of 0.99971. The measurement range is extended from a single free spectral range of 1.3333–1.3561 to approximately three free spectral ranges of 1.3333–1.3921 without sacrificing sensitivity. Moreover

a wider measurement range can be achieved with sufficient training data. This work successfully resolves the inherent contradiction between high sensitivity and wide dynamic measurement range in optical interference-based sensors

opening up a path for the next generation of intelligent sensing systems.

关键词

Keywords

references

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