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Optik 126 (2015) 10441046

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Optik
journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ijleo

Fiber-optic temperature sensor based on a thinner no-core ber


Lin Ma , Zexin Kang 1 , Yanhui Qi 1 , Shuisheng Jian 1
Key Laboratory of All Optical Network & Advanced Telecommunication Network of Ministry of Education, Institute of Lightwave Technology,
Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 29 January 2014
Accepted 11 February 2015
Keywords:
Fiber temperature sensor
No-core ber
MMI
Filter

a b s t r a c t
A simple conguration of ber-optic temperature sensor based on multimode interference (MMI) effect
has been proposed and demonstrated. The MMI structure sensor is based on a thinner no-core ber and is
fabricated by using a multimode ber without cladding, also known as no-core ber. In the experiment,
the peak wavelength response of the sensor exhibits an excellent linear response within the measured
temperature intervals. It is found that the peak wavelength shifts responding to temperature change is
about 38.7 pm/ C, much bigger than the temperature sensors based on ber Bragg grating in traditional
multimode bers, whose wavelength shift is about 11.5 pm/ C.
2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Temperature sensor is very important in many applications. In
many cases, we need to monitor the temperature of environment.
This is particularly useful for ammable gases or fuels, or some
dangerous and corrosive chemicals. The traditional temperature
sensors based on mechanical and electrical are very effective, but
in some cases, they cannot be used if the liquid or gas that we
need to monitor is conductive or corrosive. Optical bers offer several advantages as compared to other technologies, such as low
power consumption, ability to withstand corrosive environment,
immunity from electromagnetic interference, high sensitivity, long
distance between signal generation and detection [15]. Therefore, the optical ber temperature sensors are well suitable for
monitoring the temperature of ammable uids or explosive environment, since they do not require electrical signals. Lots of optical
ber temperature sensors have been reported, most of them are
based on ber Bragg grating (FBG) in multimode optical bers,
these sensors have simple construction, but low temperature resolution [69]. Some other optical ber temperature sensors are
based on Brillouin or Raman scattering, these sensors have high
temperature resolution but more complex construction and more
expensive [10]. The single-modemultimodesingle-mode (SMS)
ber structure has been used to fabricate the ber sensors in

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 010 51683834; fax: +86 010 51688625.
E-mail addresses: lin.ma.wf@gmail.com (L. Ma), 10120244@bjtu.edu.cn
(Z. Kang), 11111012@bjtu.edu.cn (Y. Qi), ssjian@center.njtu.edu.cn (S. Jian).
1
Tel.: +86 010 51683834; fax: +86 010 51688625.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2015.02.084
0030-4026/ 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

recent years [11,12]. It is reported that the SMS sensor is sensitive to the strain and curvature change and can be used as a
strain or curvature sensor. However, these sensors used the traditional MMF to fabricate the ber optic sensors, which limited
the sensitivity of the sensors. In addition, the multimode interference (MMI) structure also can be used for improving the high
power of superluminescent diodes [13,14], which improves its
application.
In this letter, a simple but sensitive temperature sensor based
on multimode interference (MMI) is demonstrated [1,1519]. Here
we use no-core ber (NCF) to replace the traditional multimode
ber (MMF). It is well known that NCF exhibits a sensitive response
to the changes of its surrounding environment, and the fabrication which just requires splicing a specic section of NCF between
two single-mode ber (SMF) segments is very simple. The diameter of NCF we used in our sensor is about 96 m with the air as
its cladding. When the environment temperature is changed, there
will be a spectral shift response of the sensor, and the temperature
change can be correlated with the spectral shift. The sensing component of the MMI sensor is NCF, without cladding or with the air
as its cladding. Because the sensing component can contact with
the environment directly, it will be inuenced by the temperature
change more directly, and the sensitivity will also be better than
FBG. As reported, the temperature response of ber Bragg grating
in traditional multimode bers is about 11.5 pm/ C [6]. However,
the peak wavelength shifting of NCF sensor is 38.7 pm/ C according
to our experimental result, about four times as compared to FBG. In
addition, the peak wavelength of the NCF sensor can be changed by
simply changing the length of NCF. The fabrication of such a sensor is straightforward, which means that it can be used for many
applications.

L. Ma et al. / Optik 126 (2015) 10441046

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2. Principle
According to MMI theory, the length of the NCF can be calculated
using the follow equation [17]:
L=p

 3L 


with p = 0, 1, 2, . . .

(1)

where p is the self-image number and L corresponds to the Beat


length,
L
=

2
4nNCF DNCF

(2)

30

where nNCF and DNCF corresponds, respectively, to the refractive


index and the diameter of the NCF, and 0 is the free space wavelength. When Eq. (2) is combined with Eq. (1), the free space
wavelength can be calculated as:

0 = p

2
nNCF DNCF

, with p = 0, 1, 2, . . .

(3)

According to [16], the fourth self-imaging exhibits the lowest


insertion loss compared to the other imaging (p = 0, 1, 2,. . .). Therefore in order to obtain the minimum insertion loss, we use the
fourth self-imaging in our sensor. The schematic of the sensor is
shown in Fig. 1. The MMI structure sensor was fabricated by just
fusing a section of NCF in between two SMFs. The key component is
a segment of NCF with a precise length. The length of NCF we used
in our sensor is 34.3 mm, with the peak wavelength of 1558 nm.
Here we should point out that the NCF we used is a little thinner
than SMF, with a diameter of 96 m. As shown in Fig. 1, the melting point shape between the NCF and SMF is like a taper, which is
easier for light to couple into the NCF.
When the light is injected from the input SMF into the NCF,
multiple modes will be excited and will propagate along the NCF.
Due to the circular symmetry of the input eld, only LPom modes
can be excited in the NCF. The input eld at the NCF can be written
as [11]:
E(r, 0) =

M


bm

m (r)

(4)

m=1

where m (r) is the mth eigenmode of the NCF, E(r, 0) is the core
eigenmode of the input SMF and bm is the excitation coefcient for
each mode and can be expressed as:


E(r, 0)
bm = 0
0

m (r)

m (r)rdr
m (r)rdr

(5)

The eld NCF section at a propagation distance z cab be


expressed as:
E(r, z) =

M


bm

Fig. 2. Theoretical peak wavelength response of the NCF sensor.

m (r) exp(jm Z)

(6)

m=1

Here m is the propagation constant of mth eigenmode of the NCF,


and the transmission spectrum of the MMI structure sensor can be
calculated by Eq. (6).

Fig. 1. Schematic of the NCF temperature sensor and the melting point shape.

Fig. 3. Experimental peak wavelength response of the NCF sensor.

According to Eq. (3), the length of no-core ber will inuence the
transmission peak wavelength of the MMI lter. So in order to gain
the peak wavelength we wanted, we need to control the length of
no-core ber precisely. The theoretical peak wavelength response
of the sensor calculated by Eq. (6) is shown in Fig. 2. When the length
of the NCF is changed, the peak wavelength will shift correspondingly. Fig. 2 is the simulated result related to the length of NCF.
In order to study the inuence of the length of NCF, we fabricated
four NCF sensors with different length of NCF in this experiment.
The measured spectrum of these four sensors is shown in Fig. 3.
The length of NCF is ranged from 33.7 mm to 35.1 mm with the
transmission peak wavelength ranges from 1590 nm to 1497 nm
correspondingly. Here we should point out that there is a little
difference with the simulated and experiment results due to the
measured deviation for the NCF length.
As shown in Fig. 3, the sensor is very sensitive to the length of
NCF. The peak wavelength ranged from about 1500 nm to 1600 nm
with the length of NCF changed only about 1.4 mm. When the
environment temperature changes, the parameters of NCF, including length, diameter, etc., will have a little change, and the peak
wavelength will shift correspondingly. Here we can use this characteristic of NCF to fabricate our temperature sensor.
3. Experiment
As express above, the NCF sensor can be used to measure the
environment temperature change. When the environment temperature changed, the peak wavelength of the NCF sensor will be
shifted correspondingly. In our experiment, the sensor was placed
in a temperature control box to change its environmental temperature. The schematic diagram is shown in Fig. 4. Here we used a
white-light source as the input signal. It is a broadband light source
with the spectrum rang from 1200 nm to 2000 nm. The MMI structure sensor was stretched and xed by two ber holders (FHs) as

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L. Ma et al. / Optik 126 (2015) 10441046

Fig. 4. Schematic diagram of temperature test of the NCF temperature sensor. OSA,
optical spectrum analyzer; FH, ber holder; TCB, temperature control box.

Fig. 6 shows the spectral response of the NCF sensor, the inserted
gure is the output power response in different temperature. Here
we can see from Fig. 6 that there is also a relationship between
the output power and the measured temperature. The light intensity became stronger when the environmental temperature is
increased. As shown in the inserted part of Fig. 6, there is nearly
a linear response between the output power and temperature, and
the output power change became a little slower with the temperature increased. This characteristic of the MMI structure sensor also
can be used to measure the environment temperature change. In
addition, we just need to monitor the intensity change using an
optical power meter, which is easier to be measured as compared
to peak wavelength shift. So this characteristic of the NCF temperature sensor is more practical compared to peak wavelength shift
in some sense.
4. Conclusion

Fig. 5. The peak wavelength response of the NCF sensor for different temperature.

A ber temperature sensor based on multimode interference has


been demonstrated in this paper. Here NCF has been used to instead
the traditional multimode ber. The temperature sensitivity has
been improved effectively, and its temperature sensitivity is about
four times compared to FBG. The construction which just required
splicing a specic section of NCF between two SMF segments is
much simpler than the temperature sensor based on Brillouin or
Raman scattering. In addition, the peak wavelength of the sensor
can be changed by just controlling the length of NCF, and this property makes the sensor be suitable for different light source and
improves its practicability.
References

Fig. 6. The response of the NCF sensor for different temperature. Inset: the peak
wavelength shift pattern.

shown in Fig. 4. Then the sensor was placed into a temperature control box (TCB), which was used as the temperature control element.
At last, an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) with the resolution of
0.01 nm was used to monitor the output spectrum. By adjusting the
TCB, we can control the environmental temperature of the NCF sensor. The temperature we measured in this experiment was ranged
from 30 C to 100 C. Here we need to point out that the NCF sensor must be stretched during the experiment for the NCF sensor is
very sensitive to bend.
The peak wavelength response of the NCF sensor is shown in
Fig. 5. It is can be observed that there is an excellent linear response
within the measured temperature intervals as shown in Fig. 5. The
peak wavelength response of the sensor was measured for every
10 C with the temperature ranged from 30 C to 100 C. As shown
in Fig. 5, the peak wavelength is shifted to longer wavelengths when
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NCF sensor is about 5.1 nm, with the peak wavelength shifts from
1554.4 nm to 1559.5 nm. Because the NCF has no cladding, it will
be inuenced by the temperature change more directly and will
show a more excellent performance. The measured temperature
sensitivity of the NCF sensor is about 38.7 pm/ C, much bigger than
the traditional ber temperature sensor, which is about 11.5 pm/ C.

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