Sensing applications of fiber Bragg gratings in single mode fibers with as-drawn 25 μm diameter cladding

Abstract

The sensing properties of fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) inscribed in single mode fiber with a 5 μm diameter core and 25 μm diameter cladding are studied experimentally for temperature, strain, bending, and surrounding refractive index. Compared to normal single mode fiber, the diameter of this fiber is 5 times smaller and it stretches 14.5 times more at the same applied load. Therefore, it is much more flexible and stretchable, while maintaining excellent optical quality at wavelengths near 1550 nm. In addition to a core mode back reflection resonance, strong FBGs inscribed in this fiber show a relatively small number of narrow bandwidth (0.7 nm) cladding mode resonances separated in wavelength by 2.5–6 nm. This relatively coarse spectral comb can then be used to sense many different kinds of perturbations involving core and cladding modes. In particular, unlike cladding-mode based sensors made from tilted FBGs, all resonances are of the same azimuthal order as the core mode (i.e. HE1m). This feature makes these gratings particularly sensitive to bending which causes the appearance of new resonances and reduced amplitudes of the original ones, each by up to 10 dB/mm−1 of curvature. On the other hand, the temperature sensitivities of all modes are similar to that of standard fiber (around 11 pm/oC) while strain sensitivities are somewhat higher (1.6–1.7 pm/μstrain). The surrounding refractive index sensitivity is also increased (by a factor of 3) over normal fiber, mostly due to the increased modal dispersion of the modes of the thinner cladding. Furthermore, it is possible to serially multiplex different gratings at different wavelengths by interleaving their resonance combs and preserving each grating identity in the combined spectrum.