Abstract
Ultralow-loss optical fibers exhibiting a transmission loss as low as 1 dB/km or less over the 1.2-1.6-μm range as well as high-quality optical sources and photodetectors have been developed for long-haul high-capacity communication systems. Also, optical fiber sensor technology has been intensively developed over the past few years and has produced a wide variety of uses. Currently, there is considerable interest in the integration of these two major fiber-optic technologies for distributed sensing and control uses.1 We recently demonstrated2 a new technique to utilize a multimode fiber simultaneously as a communication link and sensor. Its principle of sensing is based on interference among the different modes at the output end when the multimode optical fiber is disturbed. However, most long-distance high-capacity communication systems use single-mode optical fibers. We report what we believe is the first single-fiber communication-sensing system using a single-mode optical fiber. The communication channel operates at the 1.3-μm wavelength, while the sensing channel operates at 0.633 μm. The value of the normalized frequency at 0.633 μm is more than 2.405 so that a few higher-order modes can propagate at this wavelength in the core region.
© 1988 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
Y. KASHIMA, M. KOBAYASHI, T. TSUBOTA, and H. TAKANO
THM39 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO:S&I) 1988
L. K. Wang and C. C. Yang
WN1 OSA Annual Meeting (FIO) 1988
M. TUR, E. L. GOLDSTEIN, and C. A. BRACKETT
WQ39 Optical Fiber Communication Conference (OFC) 1988