Progress and prospect of novel specialty fibers for fiber optic sensing

The paper reviews the major techniques of specialty fiber fabrication. It primarily reports the progress of panda-type polarization maintaining fiber, spun fiber, specialty fibers for harsh environment and those for novel distributed sensing applications. Compared with the sensing systems utilizing conventional communication fiber, the fiber optic sensors based on specialty fibers show evident advances in performance. Additionally, the development of specialty fibers facilitates the advent of novel sensing mechanisms.