Active Wavelength Control of Fiber Bragg Gratings: A Systematic Review of Tuning Mechanisms, Emerging Applications, and Future Frontiers
Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) have evolved from passive sensing elements into actively programmable photonic components, enabling dynamic wavelength control across diverse applications. This review provides a comprehensive and systematic overview of active wavelength control technologies for FBGs, deliberately excluding passive sensing applications. We systematically categorize the fundamental tuning mechanisms-including mechanical, thermal, optothermal, electro-optic, nonlinear optical, and hybrid approaches-and compare their performance characteristics in terms of tuning range, speed, precision, and trade-offs. Key enhancement techniques, such as mechanical amplification, thermal packaging, femtosecond laser fabrication, and FPGA-based interrogation, are examined. The transformative impact of actively controlled FBGs is elucidated across three major application domains: tunable and narrow-linewidth fiber lasers, reconfigurable microwave photonic systems, and emerging fields including quantum information processing and biomedical imaging. A consolidated technology map visualizes the connections between enabling techniques and applications. Finally, we critically analyze core challenges-performance trade-offs, control complexity, and integration bottlenecks-and outline future research directions driven by novel materials, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies. This review offers a structured framework for understanding active FBGs as programmable photonic primitives, providing actionable insights for researchers and engineers in academia and industry.
Source: Micromachines
DOI: 10.3390/mi17020263
Authors: Xiaoyan Wang, Erdong Xia, Chunrong Wang, Wen Ren
Institution: Sanming University
Language: English
Topic: Advanced Fiber Optic Sensors
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,534
Award: G400606457
OpenAlex ID: W7130513178