Novel ultrahigh resolution optical fibre temperature sensor

Abstract

In this paper a novel patent pending high resolution optical fibre temperature sensor, based on an optical fibre pressure and temperature sensor (OFTPS), which is surrounded by an oil filled chamber, is presented. The OFPTS is based on a Fabry Perot interferometer (FPI) which has an embedded fibre Bragg grating (FBG). The high ratio between the volume of the oil filled outer cavity and the FPIs air filled cavity, results in a highly sensitive temperature sensor. The FBG element of the device can be used for wide range temperature measurements, and combining this capability with the high resolution capability of the FPI/oil cavity results in a wide range and high resolution temperature sensing device. The outer diameter of the sensor is less than 1mm in diameter and can be designed to be even smaller. The sensors temperature response was measured in a range of ΔT = 7K and resulted in a shift in the optical spectrum of ΔλF = 61.42nm. Therefore the Q-point of the reflected optical FPI spectrum is shifting with a sensitivity of sot = 8.77 nm/K . The sensitivity can easily be further increased by changing the oil/air volumetric ratio and therefore adapt the sensor to a wide variety of applications.