Voltage Sensor Based on a Plastic Optical Fiber with a Rectangular Hole

Abstract

In this paper, we present an AC voltage sensor based on a plastic optical fiber (POF) with a rectangular hole filled with a polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) film. The dimensions of the rectangular hole and PDLC film used in the experiment were approximately 2 × 0.65 mm 2 and 20 × 0.6 × 0.2 mm 3 , respectively. The root-mean-square (RMS) amplitude of AC voltage at 60 Hz from 0 to 80 V was measured using this sensor. The transmittance of this sensor was a nonlinear function of the applied voltage. In the approximate linear region from 8 to 23 V, the sensitivity of this sensor was approximately 0.017 V −1 . The results show that the proposed voltage sensor can be used to measure the RMS amplitude of AC voltage.