In this work, an all-polarization maintaining fiber loop mirror interferometer is presented and validated as vibration and temperature sensor without crosstalk between measurands. The system is entirely built using polarization-maintaining (PM) fiber and a PM optical coupler. As a consequence, no polarization controllers are needed in the cavity, significantly simplifying the operation of the system and improving the stability and accuracy of the measurements. The loop comprises three PM fiber sections appropriately fused with an angle offset between them. In this manner, the interference is maximized and the sensing contributions of the two PM fibers used as communications channels are suppressed. The third PM fiber is used as the sensor itself, simultaneously monitoring temperature and mechanical vibration up to 1.2 kHz by means of an interrogation technique based on fast Fourier transform.

Date Published: 23 April 2017
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 10323, 25th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors, 103235V (23 April 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2263076

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10323:
25th International Conference on Optical Fiber Sensors
Youngjoo Chung; Wei Jin; Byoungho Lee; John Canning; Kentaro Nakamura; Libo Yuan, Editor(s)