Fiber optic pressure sensor

Abstract

We propose a new transduction mechanism for fiber optic pressure sensing: pressure-induced microbending, which produces excess optical attenuation in the fiber. A simple bending transducer has been used to determine the response of a step-index multimode fiber to changes in applied pressure. The potential (low frequency) acoustic sensitivity of such a transducer, calculated from this measured response, is approximately 100 μPa into a 1-Hz detection bandwidth.