Sensing characteristics of plastic optical fibres measured by optical time-domain reflectometry

A new method based on photon counting is utilized to investigate sensing characteristics of plastic optical fibres (POF) using the optical time-domain reflectometry technique. The responses of POF under various disturbances including small-radius bending, clamping, axial strain, etc, are measured and discussed. The sensing characteristics of POF are then expressed via reflection and transmission loss due to the disturbances. This provides basic data for developing a distributed sensor using POF. The result shown here implies the possibility of discriminating different types of disturbances using their specific responses.