A miniature fiber-optic Fabry-Perot interferometer (MOFPI) fabricated by splicing a hollow silica tube (HST) with inner diameter of 4 μm to the end of a single-mode fiber is investigated and experimentally demonstrated. The theoretical relationship between the free spectrum range and the length of HST is verified by fabricating several MOFPIs with different lengths. We characterize the MOFPIs for temperature, liquid refractive index, and strain. Experimental results show that the sensitivities of the temperature, liquid refractive index, and strain are 16.42 pm/℃, -118.56 dB/RIU, and 1.21 pm/με, respectively.

In a phase-sensitive optical-time domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) system, the challenge for dynamic strain measurement lies in large intensity fluctuations from trace to trace. The intensity fluctuation caused by stochastic characteristics of Rayleigh backscattering sets detection limit for the minimum strength of vibration measurement and causes the large measurement uncertainty. Thus, a trace-to-trace correlation coefficient is introduced to quantify intensity fluctuation of Φ-OTDR traces and stability of the sensor system theoretically and experimentally. A novel approach of measuring dynamic strain induced by various driving voltages of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) in Φ-OTDR is also demonstrated. Piezoelectric vibration signals are evaluated through analyzing peak values of fast Fourier transform spectra at the fundamental frequency and high-order harmonics based on Bessel functions. High trace-to-trace correlation coefficients varying from 0.824 to 0.967 among 100 measurements are obtained in experimental results, showing the good stability of our sensor system, as well as small uncertainty of measured peak values.

Rayleigh-back scattering induced coherence collapse of an asymmetric distributed feedback fiber laser (DFB FL) sensor is investigated using a composite cavity model. The coherence collapse threshold condition of the asymmetric DFB FL sensor is measured. The DFB FL sensor shows different dynamic behaviors in different pump configurations. According to the asymmetric behavior to the external optical feedback, a novel method to find the actual phase shift position of the asymmetric DFB FL sensor is presented.

A distributed feedback diode laser (DFB-DL) based hygrometer combined with a long-path-length Herriot gas cell and waterless optical components was proposed and investigated. The main function of this sensor was to simultaneously improve the measurement reliability and resolution. A comparison test between a 10-cm normal transmission-type gas cell and a 3-m Herriot gas cell was carried out to demonstrate the improvement. Reliability improvement was achieved by influence suppression of water vapor inside optical components (WVOC) through combined action of the Herriot gas cell and waterless optical components. The influence of WVOC was suppressed from 726 ppmv to 25 ppmv using the Herriot gas cell. Moreover, combined with waterless optical components, the influence of WVOC was further suppressed to no more than 4 ppmv. Resolution improvement from 11.7 ppmv to 0.32 ppmv was achieved mainly due to the application of the long-path-length Herriot gas cell. The results show that the proposed sensor has a good performance and considerable potential application in gas sensing, especially when probed gas possibly permeates into optical components.

Optical fiber optrodes are attractive sensing devices due to their ability to perform point measurement in remote locations. Mostly, they are oriented to biochemical sensing, quite often supported by fluorescent and spectroscopic techniques, but with the refractometric approach considered as well when the objective is of high measurement performance, particularly when the focus is on enhancing the measurand resolution. In this work, we address this subject, proposing and analyzing the characteristics of a fiber optic optrode relying on plasmonic interaction. A linearly tapered optical fiber tip is covered by a double overlay: the inner one - a silver thin film and over it - a dielectric layer, with this combination allowing to achieve, at a specific wavelength range, surface plasmonic resonance (SPR) interaction sensitive to the refractive index of the surrounding medium. Typically, the interrogation of the SPR sensing structures is performed, considering spectroscopic techniques, but in principle, a far better performance can be obtained, considering the reading of the phase of the light at a specific wavelength located within the spectral plasmonic resonance. This is the approach which is studied here in the context of the proposed optical fiber optrode configuration. The analysis performed shows the combination of a silver inner layer with a dielectric titanium oxide layer with tuned thicknesses enables sensitive phase reading and allows the operation of the fiber optic optrode sensor in the third telecommunication wavelength window.

A 2×2 optical waveguide coupler at 850 nm based on the multimode interference (MMI) structure with the polysilsesquioxanes liquid series (PSQ-Ls) polymer material and the imprint technique is presented. The influence of the structural parameters, such as the single mode condition, the waveguide spacing of input/output ports, and the width and length of the multimode waveguide, on the optical splitting performance including the excess loss and the uniformity is simulated by the beam propagation method. By inserting a taper section of isosceles trapezoid between the single mode and multimode waveguides, the optimized structural parameters for low excess loss and high uniformity are obtained with the excess loss of -0.040 dB and the uniformity of -0.007 dB. The effect of the structure deviations induced during the imprint process on the optical splitting performance at different residual layer thicknesses is also investigated. The analysis results provide useful instructions for the waveguide device fabrication.

A new type of gain flattening filter for amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source based on erbium doped fiber (EDF) is proposed and demonstrated by fabricating and writing two series ultra-long period fiber grating (ULPFG) on single mode fiber (SMF-28). The novelty method in this research is based on writing the two ULPFGs as fat gratings. The LPG is written by a simple and available arc-discharge method. The pump power based on single-pass backward pump configuration is around 100 mW, and the average wavelength is near to 974 nm. The gain flattening profile is obtained by 3.4 (±1.7) dB ripple in the wavelength range between 1524 nm and 1565 nm with 41-nm band width.

Emission of the electromagnetic pulses (EMP) due to laser-target interaction in laser facility had been evaluated using a cone antenna in this work. The microwave in frequencies ranging from several hundreds of MHz to 2 GHz was recorded when long-pulse lasers with several thousands of joules illuminated the solid targets, meanwhile the voltage signals from 1 V to 4 V were captured as functions of laser energy and backlight laser, where the corresponding electric field strengths were obtained by simulating the cone antenna in combination with conducting a mathematical process (Tiknohov Regularization with L curve). All the typical coupled voltage oscillations displayed multiple peaks and had duration of up to 80 ns before decaying into noise and mechanisms of the EMP generation was schematically interpreted in basis of the practical measuring environments. The resultant data were expected to offer basic know-how to achieve inertial confinement fusion.

A narrow linewidth laser configuration based on distributed feedback fiber lasers (DFB-FL) with eight wavelengths in the international telecommunication union (ITU) grid is presented and realized. In this laser configuration, eight phase-shifted gratings in series are bidirectionally pumped by two 980-nm laser diodes (LDs). The final laser output with over 10-mW power for each wavelength can be obtained, and the maximum power difference within eight wavelengths is 1.2 dB. The laser configuration with multiple wavelengths and uniform power outputs can be very useful in large scaled optical fiber hydrophone fields.

Optical fiber pre-warning system (OFPS) is widely utilized in pipeline transport fields. The intrusions of OFPS need to be located. In this system, the original signals consist of noises, interferences, and intrusion signals. Here, noises are background and harmless interferences possessing with high power, and the intrusion signals are the main target of detection in this system. Hence, the study stresses on extracting the intrusion signals from the total ones. The proposed method can be divided into two parts, constant false alarm rate (CFAR) and dilation and erosion (DE). The former is applied to eliminate noises, and the latter is to remove interferences. According to some researches, the feature of noise background accords with the CFAR spatial detection. Furthermore, the detection results after CFAR can be presented as a binary image of time and space. Besides, interferences are relatively disconnected. Consequently, they can be eliminated by DE which is introduced from the image processing. To sum up, this novel method is based on CFAR and DE which can eliminate noises and interferences effectively. Moreover, it performs a brilliant detection performance. A series of tests were developed in Men Tou Gou of Beijing, China, and the reliability of proposed method can be verified by these tests.

Optical bistabilities have been considered to be useful for sensor applications. As a typical nonlinear device, Fabry-Perot semiconductor optical amplifiers (FPSOAs) exhibit bistability under certain conditions. In this paper, the bistable characteristics in FPSOAs are investigated theoretically. Based on Adams’s relationship between the incident optical intensity Iin and the z-independent average intracavity intensity Iav, an analytical expression of the bistable loop width in SOAs is derived. Numerical simulations confirm the accuracy of the analytical result.

We design an ultra-compact water temperature sensor by using the photonic crystal technology on the InP substrate at the 1.55-μm wavelength window. The photonic crystal consists of rods in a hexagonal lattice and a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) background. By using the plane wave expansion (PWE) method, the lattice constant and radius of rods are obtained, 520 nm and 80.6 nm, respectively. With a nanocavity placed in the waveguide, a resonance peak is observed at the 1.55-μm wavelength window. Any change of the water temperature inside the nanocavity results in the shift of the resonance wavelength. Our simulations show a shift of about 11 nm for a temperature change of 22.5 ℃. The resonance wavelength has a linear relation with the water temperature.

This paper proposes a hexagonal photonic crystal fiber (H-PCF) structure with high relative sensitivity for liquid sensing; in which both core and cladding are microstructures. Numerical investigation is carried out by employing the full vectorial finite element method (FEM). The analysis has been done in four stages of the proposed structure. The investigation shows that the proposed structure achieves higher relative sensitivity by increasing the diameter of the innermost ring air holes in the cladding. Moreover, placing a single channel instead of using a group of tiny channels increases the relative sensitivity effectively. Investigating the effects of different parameters, the optimized structure shows significantly higher relative sensitivity with a low confinement loss.