Compact optical fiber whitelight interferometric distance sensor for arbitrary small distance measurement

Abstract

A compact optical fiber distance sensor that is capable of measuring arbitrary small distance is produced by fabricating a microsized polymer core at the end of a single mode fiber. The polymer core introduces an additional reflective interface to a conventional Fabry-Perot cavity. As such, sufficient fringes are presented in the whitelight reflectance spectrum of the distance sensor so that arbitrary small distances can be demodulated using the Fourier transformation technique. The performance of the distance sensor is verified experimentally.