In this Letter, a novel, to the best of our knowledge, Fabry–Perot cavity, based on Bragg grating technology for temperature and strain monitoring, is presented. Such a structure consists of two linearly chirped fiber Bragg gratings of a significant length written in a thermally tapered optical fiber. The technological process for manufacturing such a grating allows for utilization of almost every tapered fiber, by means of its profile and also phase masks with various chirp ratios. For this type of structure, a method for strain discrimination based on monitoring of the cavity length is proposed, enabling potential multiplexation of the sensor of two structures, which have the similar reflection spectra, by means of their spectral position. The utilized sensing mechanism allowed for achieving strain sensitivity by means of the cavity length change as high as 5 µm/µɛ. Also, as it has been experimentally shown a structure can also be employed for measurements of temperature, with the sensitivity equal to 8.96 pm/°C.

No abstract

This work presents a numerical spectral properities analysis of a chirped-Bragg-grating-based Fabry–Perot (F-P CTFBG) cavity written in tapered fiber together with its application for strain monitoring. The work focuses on analyzing the structure’s sensing performance and spectral response for codirectionally and counter-directionally written reflectors for various manufacturing process parameters (reflector lengths, phase mask chirp ratios, and positions on the linear transition of tapered fiber). In turn, it is shown that by manipulating the Bragg wavelength distribution of the cavity’s reflectors, it is possible to control strain sensitivity character (i.e., positive or negative). The discussion also focuses on signal processing of the acquired spectrum through analytical derivation of the digital filter parameters that allows for unambiguous extraction of the cavity length for a given axial force applied to the each sensor irrespectively. Finally, a sensing system consisting of two cavities with either co-directionally or counter-directionally written reflectors is discussed.

No abstract