In this paper, we propose and experimentally investigate an optical sensor based on a novel combination of a long-period fiber grating (LPFG) with a permanent magnet to measure electrical current in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The proposed device uses a neodymium magnet attached to the grating structure, which suffers from an electromagnetic force produced when the current flows in the wire of the UAV engine. Therefore, it causes deformation on the sensor and thus, different shifts occur in the resonant bands of the transmission spectrum of the LPFG. Finally, the results show that it is possible to monitor electrical current throughout the entire operating range of the UAV engine from 0 A to 10 A in an effective and practical way with good linearity, reliability and response time, which are desirable characteristics in electrical current sensing.

In this paper, we present and discuss a scheme to perform simultaneous measurement of multi-perturbations using a single Long-Period Grating (LPG). It was shown that different spectral shifts in the resonant bands of the transmitted spectrum of an LPG sensor can be used for measuring concurrent perturbations. The functioning mechanism of this multi-parameter sensing scheme is discussed and used to perform simultaneous sensing of temperature, mechanical strain and refractive index variations.

We report a production technique of reducing the polarization-dependent loss (PDL) always present in arc-induced long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs). The proposed fabrication method is based upon the rotation of the optical fiber by an axial angle of 180 deg at each electric arc discharge, therefore, inducing opposite point-by-point asymmetric modulations over the entire length of the LPFG. PDL measurements of different arc-induced LPFGs fabricated by both the conventional and proposed method are presented. Finally, the obtained results show a significant decrease of the intrinsic PDL of arc-induced LPFGs with the proposed fabrication technique.