In general, a sensor is used to monitor a single parameter only, and in many cases, a reference sensor is necessary to compensate the effect of temperature. Here, we demonstrate that a single supermode interferometer is capable of monitoring two parameters simultaneously. Said interferometer was fabricated with a segment of strongly coupled multicore fiber fusion spliced at the end of a standard single mode fiber. The free end of the multicore fiber was flat, thus, it behaved as a low reflectivity mirror whose reflection depended on the external refractive index. The reflection spectrum of our supermode interferometer consisted of well-defined periodic maxima and minima whose values and position varied when the interferometer was exposed to refractive index and temperature changes. In the Fourier domain, the changes of the interference pattern can be decoded easily. We demonstrate that the supermode interferometer here proposed can be useful to measure the thermo-optic coefficient of a sample. An important advantage of the device reported here is that the length of the multicore fiber is not determinant on the performance of the sensor. In addition, the device can be reused multiple times.

We report on a packaged interferometer built with strongly-coupled multi-core optical fiber (MCF) for vibration sensing. A miniature test mass (~0.01 g) induces cyclic bending to the MCF which results in periodic shifts of the interference pattern.

During recent years, the optical-fiber-based simultaneous sensing of strain and temperature has attracted increased interest for different applications, e.g., in medicine, architecture, and aerospace. Specialized fiber layouts further enlarge the field of applications at much lower costs and with easier handling. Today, the performance of many sensors fabricated from conventional fibers suffers from cross-sensitivity (temperature and strain) and relatively high interrogation costs. In contrast, customized fiber architectures would make it possible to circumvent such sensor drawbacks. Here, we report on the development of a high-quality coupled-core fiber and its performance for sensors—from the initial fiber layout via elaboration of the preform and fiber up to the sensor evaluation. A compact, high-speed, and cost-effective interrogation unit using such a specialized coupled-core fiber has been designed to monitor reflectivity changes while even being able to distinguish the direction of the force or impact. Several fiber core material techniques and approaches were investigated, which made it possible to obtain a sufficient volume of material for the required fiber core number and a specialized fiber core geometry in terms of core distances and radial refractive index profile, whilst handling the non-symmetrical fiber architectures of such modeled, complex structures and balancing resources and efforts.

Gravimeters are devices that can be used in a wide range of applications, such as mining, seismology, geodesy, archeology, geophysics and many others. These devices have great sensibility, which makes them susceptible to external vibrations like electromagnetic waves. There are several technologies regarding gravimeters that are of use in industrial metrology. Optical fiber is immune to electromagnetic interference, and together with long period gratings can form high sensibility sensors of small size, offering advantages over other systems with different technologies. This paper shows the development of an optical fiber gravimeter doped with Erbium that was characterized optically for loads going from 1 to 10 kg in a bandwidth between 1590nm to 1960nm, displaying a weight linear response against power. Later on this paper, the experimental results show that the previous described behavior can be modeled as characteristic function of the sensor.