Phase-shifted transmission/reflection-type hybrid extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric optical fiber sensors

Conventional interferometric optical fiber sensors, including the extrinsic Fabry-Perot interferometric (EFPI) optical fiber sensor, have the drawback of ambiguous measurement directions and direction changes, because their signal processing using only fringe counting cannot present measurement direction information, such as tension/compression of strain or increment/decrement of temperature. An EFPI optical fiber sensor constructed with a transmission-type structure (TEFPI optical fiber sensor) can successfully compensate for this problem. However, it has low interferometric fringe visibility and requires somewhat sophisticated signal processing to detect the measurement direction changes. In this research, a hybrid EFPI optical fiber sensor is presented from which transmission-type and reflection-type sensor signals can be simultaneously acquired. The linear combination of the actual transmission-type and reflection-type signals is shown to have a shifted phase from the reflection-type signal according to measurement directions, and thus the phase behavior of lead/lag can present the measurement direction information. Because the hybrid sensor uses separated signals for the measurement quantity and direction, its signal processing is more robust than that of the TEFPI sensor. The sensor and signal processing algorithm were verified with the strain measurement experiments.