Analytic Formulation of Transmission Light Intensity of Hole Blockers in Intensity-based Polymer Optical Fiber Sensors

Abstract

Intensity-based optical fiber sensors are devised using a blocker which is located between two polymer optical fibers(POFs), one fiber is light-in and the other is light-out. This blocker is moved by an external displacement. Therefore, finding a general formulation of the relation between this displacement and transmission light intensity of various blockers is important to help develop intensity-based optical fiber sensors. In this paper, we consider blockers with arbitrary shapes from circular holes to inclined angled blockers. The transmission light intensities of such blockers should be determined by this generalized equation. In order to verify this equation, the calculated intensities of the blockers are compared with the values acquired from experiment. In the comparison, it is shown that the analytic equation can give the exact values of the transmitted light intensities for the assorted blockers. The range of the displacement measurement is also shown to be about 6 times of the radius of the hole in the case of a 9 degree inclined angle blocker.