Abstract

In recent years, optical fiber distributed vibration sensors (DVSs) have received extensive investigation and play a significant role in different applications, such as structural health monitoring. In this Letter, we propose for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a DVS mechanism based on linearly polarized mode coupling in weakly coupled few-mode fibers (FMFs), in which dynamic transverse stress induced by external vibration is measured with quantifiable and spatially resolvable mode coupling along the sensing FMF with ultralow inherent modal crosstalk. A swept-wavelength interferometer method is implemented and the involved data processing method is designed. A proof-of-concept DVS system is established and 5 Hz to 49 kHz frequency response, –50 dB detection sensitivity, and 22 m spatial resolution are successfully demonstrated based on a 9.6 km weakly coupled two-mode fiber. The wide frequency response over a long sensing length for the proposed scheme may extend the application range of DVS systems.

© 2022 Optica Publishing Group

Long-haul intermodal-MIMO-free MDM transmission based on a weakly coupled multiple-ring-core few-mode fiber

Mingqing Zuo, Dawei Ge, JiaXin Liu, Yuyang Gao, Lei Shen, Xiaobo Lan, Zhangyuan Chen, Yongqi He, and Juhao Li
Opt. Express 30(4) 5868-5878 (2022)

Few-mode fiber based distributed curvature sensor through quasi-single-mode Brillouin frequency shift

Hao Wu, Ruoxu Wang, Deming Liu, Songnian Fu, Can Zhao, Huifeng Wei, Weijun Tong, Perry Ping Shum, and Ming Tang
Opt. Lett. 41(7) 1514-1517 (2016)

Mode-division-multiplexing self-homodyne coherent transmission over a weakly coupled few-mode fiber for optical interconnections

Gang Qiao, Chengbin Long, Yu Yang, Zhaopeng Xu, Mingqing Zuo, Qi Wu, Shangcheng Wang, Lulu Liu, Lei Shen, Jie Luo, Zhixue He, Honglin Ji, Weisheng Hu, Zhangyuan Chen, and Juhao Li
Opt. Lett. 49(4) 981-984 (2024)

Bending-loss-resistant distributed Brillouin curvature sensor based on an erbium-doped few-mode fiber

Pengbai Xu, Jiahao Yuan, Zhensen Gao, Lei Shen, Ou Xu, Jianping Li, Yongkang Dong, Xinyong Dong, Jun Yang, Yuncai Wang, and Yuwen Qin
Opt. Lett. 46(13) 3239-3242 (2021)

Few-mode fiber multi-parameter sensor with distributed temperature and strain discrimination

An Li, Yifei Wang, Jian Fang, Ming-Jun Li, Byoung Yoon Kim, and William Shieh
Opt. Lett. 40(7) 1488-1491 (2015)