Abstract

For the last few years progress in the development of fiber optic sensors has been substantial. In contrast to the first few years of their development when work concentrated on the demonstration of the feasibility of the sensing concept, current efforts are centering on the demonstration of reliability, cost effectiveness and environmental operation required for practical sensors. Fiber optic sensors (FOS) were shown to be able to detect over 50 variables and several early FOS demonstrations attempted to develop packaged fiber optic sensors. In general the attempts were reasonably successful. In environments where a single variable was to be measured in the presence of other variables in a similar signal band, considerable effort was necessary to achieve competitive performance. Despite these early problems, a relatively small number of optical fiber sensors have entered the market place. Consequently during the past several years, considerable effort has been applied to overcome many of the early problems.

© 1986 Optical Society of America