Highly sensitive bend sensor based on Mach–Zehnder interferometer using photonic crystal fiber

• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2011.02.061
• Publication Date: 2011-03-16T18:36:36Z
• Authors: Ming Deng; Chang-Ping Tang; Tao Zhu; Yun-Jiang Rao
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

Abstract Optical fiber bend sensor with photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is demonstrated experimentally. The results show that the PCF-based MZI is sensitive to bending with a sensitivity of 3.046 nm/m−1 and is independent on temperature with a sensitivity of 0.0019 nm/°C, making it the best candidate for temperature insensitive bend sensors. To that end, another kind of bend sensor with higher sensitivity of 5.129 nm/m−1 is proposed, which is constructed by combining an LPFG and an MZI with zero offset at the second splice mentioned above.