Cascaded Sagnac Loops Embedded With Two Polarization Maintaining Photonic Crystal Fibers for Highly Sensitive Strain Measurement

A strain sensor based on cascaded Sagnac loops with two polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fibers (PMPCFs) has been experimentally demonstrated. Air holes distributed on the cross section of PMPCF go through the whole fiber, which makes the special fiber more sensitive to ambient force compar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement 2021, Vol.70, p.1-9
Main Authors: Liu, Qiang, Xing, Liang, Wu, Zhaoxia, Fu, Yongqing, Li, Shuguang, Xue, Pingsheng, Ng, Wai Pang, Wu, Qiang, Binns, Richard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capacitive sensors
Cascaded Sagnac loops
Crystal fibers
Envelopes
Optical fiber sensors
Optical fibers
photonic crystal fiber (PCF)
Photonic crystals
Polarization
Sagnac interferometers
Sensitivity
Sensors
Strain
Strain measurement
strain sensor
Temperature sensors
Vernier effect
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Summary:A strain sensor based on cascaded Sagnac loops with two polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fibers (PMPCFs) has been experimentally demonstrated. Air holes distributed on the cross section of PMPCF go through the whole fiber, which makes the special fiber more sensitive to ambient force compared with conventional optical fiber. The lengths of the two PMPCFs are close, but not the same, to form envelopes on the total output spectrum and then obtain high resolution to the detected parameter by the Vernier effect. The influences of the difference in length of the two PMPCFS on spectral envelopes are discussed. As the length of the PMPCF in reference loop increases, free spectrum range of the cascaded Sagnac loops (or envelope period) and magnification decrease. The sensitivities of this strain sensor are calculated by tracking upper and lower envelopes. Results reveal that its average sensitivity is up to 45.15 pm/με and the corresponding resolution is 0.44 με as strain varies from 0 to 2000 με. Compared with a single Sagnac loop, the sensitivity magnification is about 28.94. The sensing characteristics of a conventional polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) are studied to compare with the PMPCF. Moreover, reversibility has also been proved to possess low error rate. In short, the fiber strain sensor possesses high sensitivity and great reversibility.
ISSN:0018-9456
1557-9662
DOI:10.1109/TIM.2021.3050822