All-Fiber Curvature Sensor Based on an Abrupt Tapered Fiber and a Fabry-Perot Interferometer

In this letter, a highly sensitive curvature sensor arrangement based on an abrupt tapered fiber (ATF) concatenated with an all-fiber micro Fabry-Perot interferometer (MFPI) is presented. Here, as the ATF is bent, the MFPI spectral fringes contrast decreases. In addition, the curvature sensitivity is considerably enhanced due to the use of the ATF. Finally, it is shown that with this arrangement, at 1530-nm wavelength, it is possible to detect curvature changes with a sensitivity of 11.27 dB/m(-1) and a curvature resolution of 8.87x10(-3) m(-1) within the measurement range of 0 -3.5 m(-1)