Optical Fiber Physical and Mechanical Sensors

A special issue of Photonics (ISSN 2304-6732). This special issue belongs to the section "Lasers, Light Sources and Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 July 2023) | Viewed by 8195

Special Issue Editors

Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou 311121, China
Interests: development of fiber-optic and microwave devices for sensing applications in harsh environments
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Interests: optical fiber sensors; laser interferometry measurement; displacement measurement; optical fiber sensor network; fiber accelerometer

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Optical fiber sensors (OFSs) have been widely and successfully used in an expansive range of sensing applications, such as structural health monitoring, downhole monitoring, chemical and biological sensing, environmental monitoring, etc., for the past four decades, and continue to be a critical fundamental and applied research field. OFSs provide a convenient way of implementing optical sensing using integrated optics, simply by the direction of light to and the collection of light from regions under investigation via optical fibers. We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, “Optical Fiber Physical and Mechanical Sensors, which is dedicated to covering a unique aspect of optical fiber sensing techniques and systems developed for measuring physical and mechanical quantities. Original full research articles, communications, and reviews are welcome.

The contributions can address a broad range of physical and mechanical sensors based on fiber optic principles, including, but not limited to, any of the following topics:

  • Physical and mechanical sensors.
  • Pointwise interferometric sensors.
  • Fiber Bragg grating and long-period grating sensors.
  • Multiplexed and distributed sensing techniques and systems.
  • Environmental, defense, and industrial applications of optical fiber sensors.
  • New structures, effects, and materials for optical fiber sensing.
  • New signal processing techniques for optical fiber sensors.
  • Machine-learning-assisted intelligent sensors.
  • Displacement, strain, force, tilt angle, vibration, acceleration, pressure, and acoustic sensors.

Dr. Chen Zhu
Dr. Xu Zhilin
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 5321 KiB  
Article
Simultaneous and Multiplexed Measurement of Curvature and Strain Based on Optical Fiber Fabry-Perot Interferometric Sensors
by Chen Zhu, Hongkun Zheng, Osamah Alsalman, Wassana Naku and Lingmei Ma
Photonics 2023, 10(5), 580; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10050580 - 16 May 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1694
Abstract
Optical fiber sensors that have a compact size and the capability for multi-parameter sensing are desired in various applications. This article reports a miniaturized optical fiber Fabry-Perot interferometric sensor with a length of hundreds of µm that is able to simultaneously measure variations [...] Read more.
Optical fiber sensors that have a compact size and the capability for multi-parameter sensing are desired in various applications. This article reports a miniaturized optical fiber Fabry-Perot interferometric sensor with a length of hundreds of µm that is able to simultaneously measure variations of curvature, temperature, and strain. The sensor is easy to fabricate, requiring only the fusion splicing of a short section of the silica capillary tube between two single-mode fibers (SMFs). The combined mechanism of the Fabry-Perot interference occurred in the two interfaces between the capillary and the SMFs, and the antiresonant guidance induced by the capillary tube makes the device capable of realizing multi-parameter sensing. A simplified coefficient matrix approach is developed to decouple the contributions from different parameters. In addition, the capability of the device for multiplexing is investigated, where four such prototypes with different air cavity lengths are multiplexed in a system in parallel. The spectral behavior of an individual device for measuring curvature and strain is reconstructed and investigated, showing reliable responses and little crosstalk between different devices. The proposed device is easy to fabricate, cost-effective, robust, and could find potential applications in the field of structural health monitoring and medical and human–machine interactive sensing. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Fiber Physical and Mechanical Sensors)
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14 pages, 6628 KiB  
Article
Thermal Sensitivity of Birefringence in Polarization-Maintaining Hollow-Core Photonic Bandgap Fibers
by Lidong Wang, Meisong Liao, Fei Yu, Weichang Li, Jiacheng Xu, Lili Hu and Weiqing Gao
Photonics 2023, 10(2), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics10020103 - 18 Jan 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1920
Abstract
Polarization-maintaining (PM) fiber is the core sensitive component of a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG); its birefringence temperature stability is crucial for maintaining accuracy. Here, we systematically investigated the structural thermal deformation and the resulting birefringence variation in typical PM hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers [...] Read more.
Polarization-maintaining (PM) fiber is the core sensitive component of a fiber optic gyroscope (FOG); its birefringence temperature stability is crucial for maintaining accuracy. Here, we systematically investigated the structural thermal deformation and the resulting birefringence variation in typical PM hollow-core photonic bandgap fibers (HC-PBGFs) for FOG according to varying fiber structure parameters. To verify the application potential of PM HC-PBGFs in FOG, we compared the thermal sensitivity of birefringence (TSB) with that of the commonly used Panda PM fiber, which was tested to 5.07 × 10−5/100 °C. For rhombic-core fibers, the TSB was determined by the structure of the cladding and could be tuned as low as low as 10−7/100 °C, two orders of magnitude smaller than that of the panda PM fibers. For hexagonal-core fibers, the birefringence variation depended mainly on the drift of the surface modes (SMs) caused by the deformation of the core. A slight drift in SMs could cause a dramatic birefringence variation in hexagonal-core fiber, and the TSB could be as high as 10−4/100 °C, much higher than that of panda PM fiber. This study lays the foundation for the development of high birefringence temperature-stable HC-PBGFs and their applications in FOG. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Fiber Physical and Mechanical Sensors)
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9 pages, 2204 KiB  
Communication
A Universal Phase Error Analysis for Optical Frequency Tuning Lasers Utilized in Fiber Sensing with OFDR
by Zheyi Yao, Zhewen Yuan, Guohua Gu, Qian Chen and Xiubao Sui
Photonics 2022, 9(12), 922; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9120922 - 30 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1484
Abstract
As optical fiber sensing has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages such as high accuracy, low costs, and stability, its optical source judgment has become an attractive issue by which to characterize its performance. Optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR) has been demonstrated as [...] Read more.
As optical fiber sensing has attracted increasing attention due to its advantages such as high accuracy, low costs, and stability, its optical source judgment has become an attractive issue by which to characterize its performance. Optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR) has been demonstrated as a means of the fiber identification (ID) of optical fibers; however, the linearity of the optical frequency tuning rate determines both the spatial resolution and detection range. In this paper, the results from various simulations and experiments show that the phase error from the initial frequency and tuning rate can affect the performance of the OFDR system, which directs the future improvement direction of fiber sensing based on such technology. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Fiber Physical and Mechanical Sensors)
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16 pages, 4884 KiB  
Article
A Fast Accurate Attention-Enhanced ResNet Model for Fiber-Optic Distributed Acoustic Sensor (DAS) Signal Recognition in Complicated Urban Environments
by Xinyu Liu, Huijuan Wu, Yufeng Wang, Yunlin Tu, Yuwen Sun, Liang Liu, Yuanfeng Song, Yu Wu and Guofeng Yan
Photonics 2022, 9(10), 677; https://doi.org/10.3390/photonics9100677 - 21 Sep 2022
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2099
Abstract
The fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor (DAS), which utilizes existing communication cables as its sensing media, plays an important role in urban infrastructure monitoring and natural disaster prediction. In the face of a wide, dynamic environment in urban areas, a fast, accurate DAS signal [...] Read more.
The fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor (DAS), which utilizes existing communication cables as its sensing media, plays an important role in urban infrastructure monitoring and natural disaster prediction. In the face of a wide, dynamic environment in urban areas, a fast, accurate DAS signal recognition method is proposed with an end-to-end attention-enhanced ResNet model. In preprocessing, an objective evaluation method is used to compare the distinguishability of different input features with the Euclidean distance between the posterior probabilities classified correctly and incorrectly; then, an end-to-end ResNet is optimized with the chosen time-frequency feature as input, and a convolutional block attention module (CBAM) is added, which can quickly focus on key information from different channels and specific signal structures and improves the system recognition performance further. The results show that the proposed ResNet+CBAM model has the best performance in recognition accuracy, convergence rate, generalization capability, and computational efficiency compared with 1-D CNN, 2-D CNN, ResNet, and 2-D CNN+CBAM. An average accuracy of above 99.014% can be achieved in field testing; while dealing with multi-scenario scenes and inconsistent laying or burying environments, it can still be kept above 91.08%. The time cost is only 3.3 ms for each signal sample, which is quite applicable in online long-distance distributed monitoring applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Optical Fiber Physical and Mechanical Sensors)
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