Highly sensitive fiber-optic accelerometer by grating inscription in specific core dip fiber

Abstract

A highly sensitive fiber-optic accelerometer based on detecting the power output of resonances from the core dip is demonstrated. The sensing probe comprises a compact structure, hereby a short section of specific core (with a significant core dip) fiber stub containing a straight fiber Bragg grating is spliced to another single-mode fiber via a core self-alignment process. The femtosecond laser side-illumination technique was utilized to ensure that the grating inscription region is precisely positioned and compact in size. Two well-defined core resonances were achieved in reflection: one originates from the core dip and the other originates from fiber core. The key point is that only one of these two reflective resonances exhibits a high sensitivity to fiber bend (and vibration), whereas the other is immune to it. For low frequency (<10 Hz) and weak vibration excitation (<0.3 m/s2) measurement, the proposed sensor shows a much higher resolution (1.7 × 10−3 m/s2) by simply monitoring the total power output of the high-order core mode reflection. Moreover, the sensor simultaneously provides an inherent power reference to eliminate unwanted power fluctuations from the light source and transmission lines, thus providing a means of evaluating weak seismic wave at low frequency.

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