Open AccessSpatial-Division Multiplexed Mach–Zehnder Interferometers in Heterogeneous Multicore Fiber for Multiparameter Measurement
Author(s) -
Lin Gan,
Ruoxu Wang,
Deming Liu,
Li Duan,
Shuang Liu,
Songnian Fu,
Borui Li,
Zhenhua Feng,
Huifeng Wei,
Weijun Tong,
Ping Shum,
Ming Tang
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ieee photonics journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.725
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1943-0655
pISSN - 1943-0647
DOI - 10.1109/jphot.2016.2516254
Subject(s) - engineered materials, dielectrics and plasmas , photonics and electrooptics
We propose and demonstrate a novel spatial-division multiplexed Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) structure in heterogeneous multicore fiber (MCF) for simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain. The MZI structure is constituted of dual-tapered regions along heterogeneous MCF by using electrical arc discharge. Different spatial channels (cores) in heterogeneous MCF have dissimilar responses to the outer environment. With our in-house developed low-loss fan-in/fan-out devices, we experimentally achieved the temperature sensitivity of 47.37 pm/°C for the central core and 53.20 pm/°C for the outer core and strain sensitivity of 1.10 pm/με for the central core and 0.84 pm/με for the outer core. Using the temperature-strain joint matrix, the cross sensitivity is eliminated, and the relative measurement error is less than 5%. The spatial-division multiplexed interferometric sensors embedded in the telecommunication-grade MCF show great potential for multiparameter sensing.