Temperature insensitive distributed wide-dynamic-range strain sensing based on polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber

Abstract

In this paper, a temperature insensitive wide-dynamic-range distributed strain sensor with centimeter-level spatial resolution based on optical frequency domain reflection technology is proposed. It adopts a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PMPCF) as the sensing fiber, and experimental results demonstrate that its temperature sensitivity is much smaller than that of the standard polarization-maintaining fiber(PMF). Benefited from the specially designed cross-correlation algorithm, the sensor achieves the maximum measurable strain reaches 7000 με with spatial resolution of 1.66 cm. This provides a new approach to address current issues with special fiber sensors, such as single-point sensing and low spatial resolution, which shows great significance for structural health monitoring of buildings, bridges and tunnels with urgent requirement of large dynamic range.