Enhancing the Performance of the Photonic Integrated Sensing System by Applying Frequency Interrogation

Lab-on-a-chip systems are currently one of the most promising areas in the development of ultra-compact sensor systems, used primarily for gas and liquid analysis to determine the concentration of impurities. Integrated photonics is an ideal basis for designing “lab-on-a-chip” systems, advantageous for its compactness, energy efficiency, and low cost in mass production. This paper presents a solution for “lab-on-a-chip” device realization, consisting of a sensor and an interrogator based on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) integrated photonics platform. The sensor function is performed by an all-pass microring resonator (MRR), installed as a notch filter in the feedback circuit of an optoelectronic oscillator based on an electro-optic phase modulator. This structure realizes the frequency interrogation of the sensor with high accuracy and speed using a conventional single-mode laser source. The system sensitivity for the considered gases is 13,000 GHz/RIU. The results show that the use of frequency interrogation makes it possible to increase the intrinsic LoD by five orders. The proposed solution opens an opportunity for fully integrated implementation of a photonic “laboratory-on-a-chip” unit.