Rotational positioning measurement for the absolute angle based on a hetero-core fiber optics sensor

Abstract

We proposed a new approach to measure the rotational angle and describe how the rotational positioning sensor could be devised arranging the hetero-core fiber-optic macro-bending sensors in terms of detecting the absolute rotational angle. The hetero-core fiber optic sensor has many advantages such as ability of macro-bend sensing with optical intensity-based measurement, single-mode transmission basis and independence of temperature fluctuation for external environment. Therefore, it is suitable that the rotational positioning sensor is fabricated with the hetero-core fiber-optic technique. We designed two types of the absolute rotational position sensor modules to convert the absolute rotational angle to the displacement. The result showed that the proposed rotational positioning modules were sufficiently sensitive to the given rotational angle with monotonic loss change characteristics. The hetero-core rotational positioning sensors were successfully perceptive with typical sensitivities approximately 0.77 and 0.71 dB in the rotational angle ranges of 60 - 360 and 60 - 180 degrees. The deviation of the module in the range of 60 - 180 degrees induced 1.74 % that corresponded to 2.13 degrees.