Photonic Crystal Fiber Strain Sensor Based on Modified Mach–Zehnder Interferometer

Abstract

In this paper, a novel strain sensor is proposed and demonstrated by employing a modified photonic crystal fiber (PCF)-based Mach–Zehnder interferometer, in which a collapsed region is introduced at the middle point of the PCF to improve the extinction ratio. Experimental results show that this proposed structure has a high sensitivity of 11.22 $\hbox{dB/m}\varepsilon$ over a range of 1.28 $\hbox{m}\varepsilon$ and high-temperature stability.

Keywords

• Photonic crystal fiber (PCF)
• strain sensor
• interferometer
• temperature-insensitive
• intensity modulated