Suppression of undamped relaxation oscillation in a laser self-mixing interferometry sensing system

Undamped relaxation oscillation (RO) in a laser self-mixing interferometry (SMI) system may occur in some common application conditions, which may impact the stable operation of the system and degrade its sensing performance. In this work, we proposed to suppress the undamped RO by controlling the system operation parameters in a laser SMI sensing system. By numerically solving the famous Lang Kobayashi equations, the stability of a laser SMI system in a 3-parameter space of external cavity length, injection current and optical feedback factor were investigated. Based on the stability analyses, we determined the system operation conditions required for suppressing the undamped RO and derived an analytical expression for describing the relationship between the operation parameters. An experimental SMI system based on a laser diode (Sanyo, DL4140-001s) was implemented and verified the suppressing method. The experimental results showed that the SMI system in a moderate feedback regime can operate in steady state without undamped RO by setting proper operation parameters. This work provides useful guidance to design a stable SMI sensing system for practical applications.