The use of multicore optical fibres (MCF) in optical sensing applications has gained increasing interest over the past years due to the benefits directly brought from their inherent spatial diversity. This property allows measuring either multiple physical magnitudes at the same time or the same magnitude with slight differences in order to compensate the cross-sensitivities. We have inscribed Regenerated Fibre Bragg Gratings (RFBGs) in MCFs with the aim of implementing temperature sensors with an enhanced accuracy and for a very wide temperature range (up to 1000°C). The sensors have been made in 4-core and 7-core commercially available homogeneous MCFs. The fabrication process has been designed to create different temperature sensitivities among the identical cores of the MCF. We have obtained significant wavelength-shift differences up to 1.2 nm at 765°C, what has been used to at least double the temperature accuracy.

Date Published: 30 May 2016
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 9916, Sixth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors, 99161J (30 May 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2236617

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9916:
Sixth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors
Elfed Lewis, Editor(s)