A Review on Design and Development of Smartphone-Integrated Optical Fiber Sensors

Abstract

ABSTRACT Smartphone-based optical fiber sensors are new areas of integrated technology where the flexibility of optical fibers is combined with robust inbuilt optical sensors such as camera and ambient light sensor (ALS) of smartphone. Modifying the tip or a portion of an optical fiber with or without changing its probe geometry and coupling the modulated light signal with smartphones’ camera or ambient light sensor have been shown to perform as compact portable devices. In this review article, such types of smartphone platform optical fiber sensors using different techniques for detection of physical, chemical, and biological analytes and development of different types of real-time health care monitoring devices have been discussed. With its inception, very few research works have been reported in this area and can be regarded as one of the few unexplored areas of integrated technology. Through this review article, it is intended to highlight numerous sensing applications in a nutshell that have been reported utilizing optical fibers integrated with smartphone as readout system till date. Furthermore, the current scenario, along with challenges and future scopes of such devices, have been summarized.