Optical Magnetostrictive Current Sensor Based on In-Fiber Fabry-Perot Cavity

In this article, a compact fiber-optic current sensor (FOCS) based on an in-fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) and a magnetostrictive transducer is presented. The in-fiber FPI sensor employed in the proposed FOCS was fabricated with a 273-mu m section of a capillary fiber spliced between two pieces of a standard single-mode fiber (SMF). The in-fiber FPI sensor and a commercial fiber Bragg grating (FBG), which was used as a reference sensor for sensitivity comparison, were bonded to a small magnetostrictive actuator (Terfenol-D) and assembled in the proposed FOCS for electric currentmonitoring up to 800Arms using a commercial FBG interrogator. The in-fiber FPI sensor presented a sensitivity 84.4% higher than that of the FBG sensor. An alternative interrogation system based on an edge-filter technique with temperature compensationwas also developedandemployed for the characterizationof the proposedFOCS under the same range of electric current. Using the edge-filter interrogation system developed, the in-fiber FPI sensor presented a sensitivity 169.8% higher than that shown by the FBG sensor. The results show that the proposed FOCS using an in-fiber FPI sensor presented high sensitivity to electric current sensing and, therefore, is a potential candidate for current monitoring in complement to conventional current transformers (CTs) as well as to conventional optical CTs (OCTs).

Automated summary

This article presents a compact fiber-optic current sensor based on an in-fiber Fabry-Perot interferometer and a magnetostrictive transducer. The sensor exhibits high sensitivity to electric current sensing and has the potential to replace traditional current transformers.