We have developed a unique wide and fast wavelength-swept fiber laser for dynamic and accurate fiber sensing. The wavelength tuning is based on the dispersion tuning technique, which simply modulates the loss/gain in the dispersive laser cavity. By using wideband semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), the sweep range could be as wide as ～180nm. Since the cavity contains no mechanical components, such as tunable filters, we could achieve very high sweep rate, as high as ～200kHz. We have realized the swept lasers at three wavelength bands, 1550 nm, 1300 nm, and 800 nm, using SOAs along with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), and in two laser configurations, ring and linear ones. We also succeeded in applying the swept laser for a dynamic fiber-Bragg grating (FBG) sensor system. In this paper, we review our researches on the wide and fast wavelength-swept fiber lasers.
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