LakshmiNarayana Reddy B

• Optical Fibers Plays an important role in telecommunications.

• Along with that Optical fibers are also used for testing of
engineering components and internal organs of our body,
material processing and applications in medicine.

• Fibers can also be used to measure the temperature ,

pressure, strain, voltage, current, liquid level and rotation.
• A fiber optic sensor is a sensor that uses optical fiber either
as the sensing element or as a means of relaying signals from
a remote sensor to the electronics that process the signals.

• Fibers have many uses in remote sensing.

• Depending on the application, fiber may be used because of its

small size, or because no electrical power is needed at the
remote location, or because many sensors can be multiplexed
along the length of a fiber
• Fiber optic sensors are also immune to electromagnetic
interference.

• They do not conduct electricity so they can be used in places where

there is high voltage electricity or flammable material such as jet
fuel.

• Fiber optic sensors can be designed to withstand high temperatures

as well.

• Fiber optic sensors are excellent candidates for monitoring

environmental changes.
• Advantages of Optical Fiber Sensors:
 Easy integration into a wide variety of structures, including composite
materials, with little interference due to their small size and cylindrical
geometry.

 Inability to conduct electric current.

 Immune to electromagnetic interference and radio frequency interference.

 Lightweight.

 Robust, more resistant to harsh environments.

 High sensitivity.
Fiber optic sensor principles:
Fiber optic sensors can be classified under three categories:
1. The sensing location,
2. The operating principle,
3. The application.

Based on the sensing location, a fiber optic sensor can be

classified as
Extrinsic Fiber Optic Sensors.
Intrinsic Fiber Optic Sensors.
Intrinsic Fiber Optic Sensors:
• Here fiber acts as transmission medium to transmit light signal from
sensor to detector.
• Here fringe – pattern counter is used as detector.
• Here the physical mechanism is interference between signal and the
reference.
• The construction of Intrinsic Fiber Optic Sensors is complex as it requires
an interferometric setup.
• Intrinsic sensor can be used in measurement of pressure, temperature
and sound etc.
• In this the fiber is used as light guide to and from the sensor which is
configured to allow the measurand to change the coupling characteristics
between feed and reference.
Extrinsic Fiber Optic Sensors:
• Here light is modulated by Measurand.
• Here analog circuit is used as detector.
• The physical mechanism is modulation of transmitted light by emission
and absorption.
• Construction is simple as sensor is compatible to Multimode fiber.
• Various physical measurements such as displacement, pH value, and
electric current is done with the help of extrinsic sensor.
• In Extrinsic type fiber optic sensor physical parameters which is to be
sensed act on the fiber itself then by causing change in transmission
characteristics.
Intrinsic sensor -Temperature/ Pressure sensor:
Principle:
It is based on the principle of Interference between the beams emerging
out from the reference fiber and the fiber kept in the measuring
environment.
Working:
• A monochromatic source of light is emitted from the laser source.
• It consists of a Laser source to emit light. A beam splitter, made of
glass plate is inclined at an angle of 45º used to split the single beam
into two beams.
• The main beam passes through the lens L1 and is focused onto the
reference fiber which is isolated from the environment to be sensed.
• The beam after passing through the reference fiber then falls on the
lens L2.
• The spitted beam passes through the lens L3 and is focused onto the test
fiber kept in the environment to be sensed.
• The splitted beam after passing through the test fiber is made to fall on
the lens L2.
• The two beams after passing through the fibers, produces a path
difference due to the change in parameters such as pressure,
temperature etc., in the environment.
• Therefore a path difference is produced between the two beams, causing
the interference pattern.
• Thus the change in pressure (or) temperature can be accurately
measured with the help of the interference pattern obtained.
• By modifying a fiber so that the quantity to be measured
modulates the intensity, phase, polarization, wavelength or
transit time of light in the fiber.

• Sensors that vary the intensity of light are the simplest, since
only a simple source and detector are required.

• A particularly useful feature of intrinsic fiber optic sensors is

that they can, if required, provide distributed sensing over very
large distances.
• Temperature can be measured by using a fiber that has evanescent loss
that varies with temperature, or by analyzing the Raman scattering of the
optical fiber.
• Electrical voltage can be sensed by nonlinear optical effects in specially-
doped fiber, which alter the polarization of light as a function of voltage or
electric field.
• Angle measurement sensors can be based on the Sagnac effect.
• Special fibers like long-period fiber grating (LPG) optical fibers can be
used for direction recognition.
• Optical fibers are used as hydrophones for seismic and sonar applications.
Hydrophone systems with more than one hundred sensors per fiber cable
have been developed. Hydrophone sensor systems are used by the oil
industry as well as a few countries' navies.
• A fiber optic microphone and fiber-optic based headphone are useful in areas
with strong electrical or magnetic fields, such as communication amongst the
team of people working on a patient inside a magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) machine during MRI-guided surgery.

• Optical fiber sensors for temperature and pressure have been developed for
down hole measurement in oil wells. The fiber optic sensor is well suited for
this environment as it functions at temperatures too high for semiconductor
sensors.

• Optical fibers can be made into Interferometric sensors such as fiber optic
gyroscopes, which are used in the Boeing 767 and in some car models
• A fiber-optic AC/DC voltage sensor in the middle and high voltage range
(100–2000 V) can be created by inducing measurable amounts of Kerr
nonlinearity in single mode optical fiber by exposing a calculated length of
fiber to the external electric field.[12] The measurement technique is based
on polar metric detection and high accuracy is achieved in a hostile industrial
environment.
• High frequency (5 MHz–1 GHz) electromagnetic fields can be detected by
induced nonlinear effects in fiber with a suitable structure. The fiber used is
designed such that the Faraday and Kerr effects cause considerable phase
change in the presence of the external field. With appropriate sensor design,
this type of fiber can be used to measure different electrical and magnetic
quantities and different internal parameters of fiber material.
• Electrical power can be measured in a fiber by using a
structured bulk fiber ampere sensor coupled with proper signal
processing in a polar metric detection scheme. Experiments
have been carried out in support of the technique.

• Fiber-optic sensors are used in electrical switchgear to transmit

light from an electrical arc flash to a digital protective relay to
enable fast tripping of a breaker to reduce the energy in the
arc blast
Extrinsic Fiber Optic sensors:
• Extrinsic fiber optic sensors use an optical fiber cable, normally a
multimode one, to transmit modulated light from either a non-fiber
optical sensor, or an electronic sensor connected to an optical transmitter.
• A major benefit of extrinsic sensors is their ability to reach places which
are otherwise inaccessible.
• An example is the measurement of temperature inside aircraft jet engines
by using a fiber to transmit radiation into a radiation pyrometer located
outside the engine.
• Extrinsic sensors can also be used in the same way to measure the
internal temperature of electrical transformers, where the extreme
electromagnetic fields present make other measurement techniques
impossible
• Extrinsic fiber optic sensors provide excellent protection of measurement
signals against noise corruption.
• Unfortunately, many conventional sensors produce electrical output which
must be converted into an optical signal for use with fiber.
• For example, in the case of a platinum resistance thermometer, the
temperature changes are translated into resistance changes.
• The PRT must therefore have an electrical power supply. The modulated
voltage level at the output of the PRT can then be injected into the optical
fiber via the usual type of transmitter.
• This complicates the measurement process and means that low-voltage
power cables must be routed to the transducer.
• Extrinsic sensors are used to measure vibration, rotation, displacement,
velocity, acceleration, torque, and twisting.
Based on the operating principle, a fiber optic sensor can be
classified as

Intensity based Fiber Optic Sensors.

Phase based Fiber Optic Sensors.

Polarization based Fiber Optic Sensors.

Intensity based Fiber Optic Sensor
• Intensity based fiber optic sensors require more light and these sensors
use a multi-mode-large core fibers.
• The shown figure gives an idea about how the light intensity work as a
sensing parameter as well as how this arrangement makes the fiber to
work as a vibration sensor.
• When there is a vibration, there will be a change in light inserted from
one end to another end and this will make the intelligence for measuring
the vibration amplitude.
• In the figure, the closer fiber optic and vibration sensor depend on the
light intensity in later parts.
• These sensors have many limitations due to variable losses in the system
that do not occur in the environment.
• These variable losses include loses due to splices, micro & macro bending
losses, loses due to connections at joints, etc. The examples include
intensity-based sensors or microbend sensor and evanescent wave
sensor.

• The advantages of these fiber optic sensors include low cost, ability to
perform as real distributed sensors, very simple to implement, possibility
of being multiplexed, etc. The disadvantages include variations in the
intensity of the light and relative measurements, etc.
Polarization based Fiber Optic Sensor
• Polarization based optical fibers are important for a certain class of
sensors.
• This property can be simply modified by various external variables and
thus, these types of sensors can be used for the measurement of a range
of parameters.
• Special fibers and other components have been developed with exact
polarization features.
• Generally, these are used in a variety of measurements, communication
and signal processing applications.
• The optical setup for a polarization-based-fiber-optic sensor is shown
above. It is shaped by polarizing the light from the light source through a
polarizer.
• The polarized light is started at 45o to the selected axes of a length
of birefringent polarization protecting fiber.

• This section of the fiber is served as sensing fiber.

• Then, the phase difference between the two polarization states is

changed under any external disturbances such as stress or strain.

• Then, according to the external disturbances, the output polarization is

changed.

• Thus, by considering the output polarization state at the next end of the

fiber, the external disturbances can be detected.

Phase based Fiber Optic Sensor
• These types of sensors are used to change emitter light on information
signal wherein the signal is observed by the phase based fiber optic
sensor.
• When a light beam is passed through the interferometer, then the light
separates into two beams.
• Wherein one beam is exposed to the sensing environment and the other
beam is isolated from the sensing environment, which is used as a
reference.
• Once the two separated beams are recombined, then they get in the way
with each other.
• The most commonly used interferometers are Michelson, Mach Zehnder,
Sagnac, grating and polarimetric interferometers. Here, the Mach
Zehnder and Michelson interferometers are shown below.
• here are differences and similarities between the two interferometers.
• In terms of similarities, The Michelson Interferometer is frequently
considered to be folded Mach Zehnder interferometer.
• The configuration of the Michelson interferometer requires only one
optical fiber coupler.
• Because the light passes twice through the sensing and reference fibers,
the optical phase shift per unit length of the fiber is doubled.
• Thus, the Michelson coessentially have better sensitivity. Another clear
advantage of the Michelson is that the sensor can be interrogated with
only a single fiber between the source and source detector module. But, a
good-quality reflection mirror is required for the Michelson interferometer
Based on Applications, a fiber optic sensor can be classified as

Chemical Sensors.

Physical Sensors.

Polarization based Fiber Optic Sensors.

Chemical Sensor
• A chemical sensor is a device which is used to transform chemical
information in the form of a measurable physical signal that is associated
with the concentration of a certain chemical species.
• The Chemical sensor is an important component of an analyzer and may
include some devices that perform the following functions: signal
processing, sampling, and data processing. An analyzer may be an
important part of an automated system.
• The working of analyzer according to a sampling plan as a function of
time acts as a monitor.
• These sensors include two functional units: a receptor and a transducer.
In the receptor part, the chemical information is transformed into an
energy that may be measured by the transducer.
• In the transducer part, the chemical information is transformed into an
analytical signal and it does not show sensitivity.
Physical Sensor
• A physical sensor is a device that is made according to the physical effect
and nature.

• These sensors are used to provide the information about a physical

property of the system.

• This type of sensors are mostly signified by sensors such as photoelectric

sensors, piezoelectric sensors, metal resistance strain sensors and
semiconductor piezo-resistive sensors.
Bio Medical Sensor
• Biomedical sensor is an electronic device that is used to
transfer various non- electrical quantities in biomedical fields
into easily detectable electrical quantities.

• Due to this reason, these sensors are included in health care

analysis. This sensing technology is the key to collecting
human pathological and physiological information.