Abstract

The principle of a low-cost but nevertheless powerful plastic optical fiber stretching sensor has already been described in recent years [1-4]. Measuring the phase shift of a signal of a modulated light source which is coupled into two different POF, one of them being stretched, yields information of the elongation with a resolution better than 10⁻⁵. Analyzing the temporal or frequency behavior of the signal gives additional information. Since the phase measurement can allow for frequencies up to 2 GHz, the vibrational analysis of macroscopic structures can be extended to higher frequencies very easily, limited mainly by the signal processing electronics.

© 2010 Optical Society of America