Table of contents

OFS-19 was held in April 2008 in Perth, Australia, with Professor David Sampson (University of Western Australia) as General Chair assisted by Technical Programme Co-Chairs Professor Stephen Collins (Victoria University, Australia), Professor Kyunghwan Oh (Yonsei University, Korea) and Dr Ryozo Yamauchi (Fujikura Ltd, Japan). 'OFS-19' has once again affirmed the OFS series as the leading international conference for the optical fibre sensor community. Since its inception, in London in 1983, and under the leadership of an international steering committee independent of any learned society or professional institution, it has been held approximately every eighteen months. The venue nominally rotates from Europe, to the Americas, and thence to Asia and the Pacific. OFS-19 demonstrated the continuing vigour of the community, with some 240 papers presented, plus 8 tutorials; submissions and attendance were from 29 countries, with a little over half coming from the Asia-Pacific Region.

In recent years, it has become a tradition to publish a post-conference special issue in Measurement Science and Technology, and these special issues offer a representative sample of the current status of the field. In the 25 years since OFS began, many of the early ideas and laboratory-based proof-of-principle experiments have successfully evolved into highly developed instrumentation systems and commercial products. One of the greatest success stories has been the optical fibre Bragg grating. Its exquisite intrinsic sensitivity to temperature and strain has led to an expanding niche in structural monitoring, especially in civil engineering. It has formed the 'beach-head' for penetration of optical fibre sensors into the oil and gas industry, initially in the harsh environment of down-hole monitoring. Latterly, it has paved the way for new applications of one of the earliest fibre optic sensors, the fibre hydrophone, which is now making its mark in sub-sea seismic surveying. Additionally, distributed fibre sensors, based on Raman or Brillouin scattering, are beginning to be deployed for remote and sub-sea infrastructure monitoring. Western Australia enjoys a booming oil and gas sector, and so OFS-19's Special Session entitled Oil & Gas: Current Practice–Future Opportunity was timely and locally relevant.

An innovation at OFS-19 was turning the traditional first day's Workshop into a Tutorial Workshop delivered under the title Optical Fibre Sensors: Enabling the Next Generation, Stretching the Present Generation. International experts delivered a set of eight tutorials, covering both fundamentals and cutting-edge advances, to a large proportion of the conference delegates (the tutorials are available for download at obel.ee.uwa.edu.au/OFS-19).

This special issue amply demonstrates in microcosm the breadth of the field of optical fibre sensors, with papers concerning applications in the oil and gas industry, in water and air quality, in civil engineering, as well as new sensors, sensor systems and methods for sensing. In addition, there are papers concerning sensor fabrication and calibration, as well as components of sensing systems.

Several papers and topics are worthy of mention. The engineering of nanostructured materials promises much in many fields, including sensing in general. Thus, it is not surprising to find that nanotechnology is in evidence in the field of fibre sensing (Jarzebinska, Viegas). Microengineered mechanical structures also promise much for sensing and the exquisite 'head-of-a-pin' engineering of a cantilever on a fibre end-face is an elegant and versatile platform demonstrated here for refractometry (Alberts). The field has always provided fertile ground for new ideas, and this issue proves no exception. For example, three papers deal with new ways of solving the well-known issue of decoupling temperature from strain in fibre Bragg gratings (Guo, Nguyen, Yam). The ultimate endpoint for research in such a practical field is a useful deployed sensing system, and the oil and gas industry is the focus for four papers in this issue (Aref, Jackson, Mignani, Possetti).

We hope that this special issue helps to further developments in the field of optical fibre sensors and would like to thank all the contributing authors and reviewers for making it possible. We also thank the staff at IOP Publishing for their support and in ensuring timely publication. OFS-20 will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, 5--9 October 2009 (www.ofs20.org), with a corresponding special issue planned.

Nanostructured coatings have been deposited onto tapered optical fibres using the Langmuir–Blodgett technique. The response of the transmission spectrum of the tapered fibres to changes in thickness of the coating has been analysed. The effects observed are shown to be dependent on the diameter of the tapered region.

A novel sensing configuration for measuring humidity based on a long-period fibre grating coated with a thin film of silica nanospheres is proposed. The polymeric overlay is deposited on the grating using the electrostatic self-assembly technique. This thin film changes its optical properties when exposed to different humidity levels that translate into a shift of the resonance wavelength of the fibre grating. Wavelength shifts up to 12 nm in a relative humidity range from 20% to 80% are reported, and it is further demonstrated that such humidity sensitivity has negligible thermal dependence.

In this work, a comparative study of the behaviour of an in-fibre Mach–Zehnder interferometer for salinity measurement in a water solution is presented. The fibre transducer is composed of two nearly identical long period gratings forming an in-series 7.38 cm long device written in the same fibre optic. Two inorganic and one organic salts (NaCl, KCl, NaCOOH) were characterized within the concentration range from 0 to 150 g L⁻¹. For the long period grating interferometer, the average obtained sensitivities were −6.61, −5.58 and −3.83 pm/(g L⁻¹) for the above salts, respectively, or equivalently −40.8, −46.5 and −39.1 nm RIU⁻¹. Salinity measured by means of fibre refractometry is compared with measurements obtained using an Abbe refractometer as well as via electrical conductivity. For the long period grating refractometer, the best resolutions attained were 1.30, 1.54 and 2.03 g of salt per litre for NaCl, KCl and NaCOOH, respectively, about two times better than the resolutions obtained by the Abbe refractometer. An average thermal sensitivity of 53 pm °C⁻¹ was measured for the grating transducer immersed in water, indicating the need for the thermal correction of the sensor. Resolutions for the same ionic constituent in different salts are also analysed.

We present a fabrication method that produces azimuthally symmetric long-period fibre gratings using a carbon dioxide laser operating in the TEM_01∗-mode. The outlay and optimization of the optical system are introduced, and the long-period fibre grating fabrication method is outlined. A uniform long-period grating written in a boron-doped fibre exhibited a maximum transmission loss of 10.83 dB at 1538.5 nm. The peak transmission loss of a non-uniform long-period grating also written in the boron-doped fibre yielded a value of 10.25 dB at 1552.6 nm. The polarization properties of the fabricated long-period fibre gratings were investigated to determine the quality of the grating structures. The uniform long-period grating structure exhibited a maximum polarization-dependent loss of 0.97 dB at 1542.1 nm, and the non-uniform long-period grating yielded a maximum polarization-dependent loss of 2.48 dB at 1551.4 nm.

We present a fiber-top device designed to measure variations of the refractive index of a liquid in which it is immersed. The sensitivity achieved with this first prototype is on the order of one part over 10⁵ in a 30 kHz bandwidth. With a proper design, the device performs well also when immersed in liquids with refractive index equal to the refractive index of the core of the fiber.

We report a fiber sensor capable of simultaneously measuring temperature and strain. A fiber Bragg grating (FBG) was incorporated in a Lyot fiber filter (LFF) by fusion splicing an FBG and a section of high birefringence fiber (PM fiber), which is an elliptical core side-hole fiber, and then placing them between two polarizers. Measured in the transmission mode, the fringe resulting from the LFF and the resonance wavelength dip of the FBG have different responses when a variation of temperature or strain is applied. The proposed device can therefore measure both strain and temperature simultaneously.

Temperature-immune micro-displacement measurement is demonstrated by using a Gaussian-chirped tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG). The internal tilt angles of the sensing TFBG are effectively modulated via a displacement-induced Gaussian-strain-gradient along the specially designed bending cantilever beam. The phase mismatch between different effective pitches and tilt angles weakens the core-to-cladding mode coupling as the beam is displaced. While the power of the ghost mode resonance in transmission shows a strong sensitivity to the displacement, it is immune from spatially uniform temperature changes. Ghost-power-referenced displacement measurement and temperature-insensitive property are experimentally achieved for this cost-effective sensing device.

A fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensor, fabricated using a phase mask with 536 nm uniform pitch, for simultaneous temperature and strain measurement is presented. Two peaks/dips occur, at 785 and 1552 nm, due to reflection/transmission at the Bragg wavelength and at twice the Bragg wavelength, and arising primarily from FBG periodicities associated with half the phase mask periodicity and the phase mask periodicity, respectively. This grating was simple to fabricate and by having greater reflectivity at 785 nm, compared with 1552 nm, it is better suited for long-distance operation compared with similar schemes where the greater fibre attenuation at 785 nm is a significant limitation.

We report on the fabrication of a high pressure extrinsic Fabry–Perot interferometric (EFPI) fiber optic sensor for downhole applications by using a mechanical transducer. The mechanical transducer has been used for increasing the pressure sensitivity and the possibility of installation of the sensor downhole. The pressure–temperature cross-sensitivity (PTCS) problem has been solved by replacing the reflecting fiber with a metal microwire in the EFPI sensor. In this way the PTCS coefficient of the sensor was decreased from 47.25 psi °C⁻¹ to 7 psi °C⁻¹. By using a new EFPI design, a temperature sensor was fabricated. Further improvement in the pressure and temperature sensor has been done by developing fabrication technique and signal processing.

A prototype fibre-optic sensing system is described with potential to remotely monitor the condition of three-phase variable frequency subsea motors and electric submersible pumps. An indication that the integrity of a powerful electric motor may be compromised can be gained by spectral analysis of the stator drive current, the phases of the currents, the measurement of vibration at specific locations on the motor and the temperature of the bearings. The optical interrogation system is based on an imbalanced Mach–Zehnder fibre interferometer, illuminated with a broadband source with fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) used as the basic transducers for the current and vibration measurements. Signals were recovered at a distance of 7 km, for the 'in house' current sensor at an effective ac current of 500 A at frequencies from 10 to 1000 Hz with a S/N ratio of 45 dB, together with the relative phases between the currents. These signals were generated with a simulated high power three-phase electric motor. A commercial accelerometer was incorporated into the system which demonstrated a sensitivity of 1 mg Hz^−1/2 also from 10 to 1000 Hz. As the interrogation system can only be used to detect dynamic signals, a second interrogation for quasi-static temperature measurements is required; although this was not deployed, possible applications other than bearing temperature measurement are considered.

A collection of lubricant oils from different types of turbines, which were characterized by different degrees of degradation, were analyzed by means of wide-range absorption spectroscopy, fluorescence spectroscopy and scattering measurements. All these measurements were performed by means of optical fiber-based instrumentation that made use of compact lamps or LED illumination, and miniaturized spectrometers for detection. Multivariate data analysis was used to successfully correlate the wide optical spectral signature of lubricant oils with some of the most important parameters indicating the degree of oil degradation, such as TAN, JOAP index, water content and phosphorus.

This work shows prospects of long-period fibre grating applications as transducers for fuel conformity analysis. The proposed long-period grating transducer was employed to assess the gasoline conformity in commercial gas stations. Grating responses were used to train and validate a radial base function topology of an artificial neural network. The obtained results show that fibre optic sensors supervised by artificial neural networks can integrate systems for smart sensing with high applicability in the petrochemical field. The radial base function had reached a correct classification probability of approximately 94%. The device applicability in the analysis of hydrated ethanol fuel was also investigated by measuring the concentration of ethanol in ethanol–water mixtures. The results showed that the developed transducer can be used to infer the ethanol–water concentration with a resolution of up to 0.23%.

Smart structure sensors based on embedded fibre Bragg grating (FBG) arrays in aluminium alloy matrix by ultrasonic consolidation (UC) technique have been proposed and demonstrated successfully. The temperature, loading and bending responses of the embedded FBG arrays have been systematically characterized. The embedded FBGs exhibit an average temperature sensitivity of ∼36 pm °C⁻¹, which is three times higher than that of normal FBGs, a bending sensitivity of 0.73 nm/m⁻¹ and a loading responsivity of ∼0.1 nm kg⁻¹ within the dynamic range from 0 kg to 3 kg. These initial experimental results clearly demonstrate that the UC produced metal matrix structures can be embedded with FBG sensor arrays to become smart structures with capabilities to monitor the structure operation and health conditions in applications.

Optical fibre sensors have conventionally been made of silica. Polymers however have a much lower Young's modulus and higher elastic limit than silica, and can be incorporated into a larger range of materials. Whilst these properties make them attractive for using in mechanical sensing, using polymers also brings complexity because of their viscoelastic response. In this work, we use long period gratings (LPG) in microstructured polymer optical fibre (mPOF) as a mechanical optical sensor. The effects of stress and strain on the sensor are decoupled and analysed independently. Through experiments and modelling we show that the effect of stress (as opposed to strain), and the relaxation of stress in the optical fibre during loading have a minimal effect.

We report a distinctive polarization mode coupling behaviour of tilted fibre Bragg gratings (TFBGs) with a tilted angle exceeding 45°. The ex-45° TFBGs exhibit pronounced polarization mode splitting resulted from the birefringence induced by the grating structure asymmetry. We have fabricated TFBGs with a tilted structure at 81° and studied their properties under transverse load applied to their equivalent fast and slow axes. The results show that the light coupling to the orthogonally polarized modes of the 81°-TFBGs changes only when the load is applied to their slow axis, giving a prominent directional loading response. For the view of real applications, we further investigated the possibility of interrogating such a TFBG-based load sensor using low-cost and compact-size single wavelength source and power detector. The experimental results clearly show that the 81°-TFBGs plus the proposed power-measurement interrogation scheme may be developed to an optical fibre vector sensor system capable of not just measuring the magnitude but also recognizing the direction of the applied transverse load. Using such an 81°-TFBG based load sensor, a load change as small as 1.6 × 10⁻² g may be detected by employing a standard photodiode detector.

We calibrate the phase shift as a function of applied displacement in a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) single-mode optical fiber interferometer, operating at a wavelength of 632.8 nm. The phase sensitivity is measured up to 15.8% nominal strain in the fiber. The measured phase–displacement response is compared to a previous analytical formulation for the large deformation response of the polymer optical fiber strain sensor. The formulation includes both the finite deformation of the optical fiber and nonlinear strain-optic effects at large deformations. Using previously measured values for the linear and nonlinear mechanical response of the fiber, the nonlinear strain-optic effects are calibrated from the current experimental data. This calibration demonstrates that the nonlinearities in the strain-optic effect are of the same order of magnitude as those in the mechanical response of the PMMA optical fiber sensor.

A new amplified CWDM (coarse wavelength division multiplexing) self-referencing sensor network using phase-shifted fibre Bragg gratings (PS-FBGs) is experimentally demonstrated in this work. The network uses the PS-FBGs to address intensity sensors in a transmissive configuration, obtaining simultaneously in reflection a wavelength encoded reference signal. In order to enable the remote operation of the sensors, we have introduced optical amplification at the interrogation header of the network, using highly doped erbium fibre.

A soil-embedded optical fiber sensing cable is evaluated for an embedded cavity detection and sinkhole warning system in railway tunnels. Tests were performed on a decametric structure equipped with an embedded 110 m long fiber optic cable. Both Brillouin optical time-domain reflectometry (B-OTDR) and optical frequency-domain reflectometry (OFDR) sensing techniques were used for cable interrogation, yielding results that were in good qualitative agreement with finite-element calculations. Theoretical and experimental comparison enabled physical interpretation of the influence of ground properties, and the analysis of embedded cavity size and position. A 5 mm embedded cavity located 2 m away from the sensing cable was detected. The commercially available sensing cable remained intact after soil collapse. Specificities of each technique are analyzed in view of the application requirements. For tunnel monitoring, the OFDR technique was determined to be more viable than the B-OTDR due to higher spatial resolution, resulting in better detection and size determination of the embedded cavities. Conclusions of this investigation gave outlines for future field use of distributed strain-sensing methods under railways and more precisely enabled designing a warning system suited to the Ebersviller tunnel specificities.

Interferometric filter-based planar Doppler velocimetry is used in conjunction with imaging fibre bundles to make time-averaged three-component velocity measurements using a single imaging head. The Doppler frequency shifts of light scattered by particles entrained into the flow to be measured are transduced to intensity variations using a Mach–Zehnder interferometer. The free spectral range of the filter can be selected by adjusting the optical path difference of the interferometer. This allows the velocity measurement range, sensitivity and resolution to be varied. Three-component measurements are made possible by porting different views of the measurement plane to a single imaging head using the imaging fibre bundles. A comparison of three different image-processing techniques is presented and analysed with the aid of modelled images. Results are presented here for time-averaged measurements of a rotating disc with maximum velocities of ∼ ±34 m s⁻¹ in the field of view with the computed measurement error in the orthogonal velocity components being (0.89, 0.68, 1.42) m s⁻¹ for the measurement geometry used. Three-component velocity measurements were also made on a seeded air jet with a nozzle diameter of 20 mm and an exit velocity of ∼85 m s⁻¹.

We report an intensity-based fiber strain sensor using a pair of long-period fiber gratings (LPFGs) and an in-line core mode blocker. By inserting a core mode blocker fabricated by the arc discharge method between two LPFGs, a band-pass filter can be formed. We used an LED and an optical power meter to measure the transmittance near the resonance wavelength of the LPFGs and we obtained a relation between the axial strain applied on one of the LPFGs and the transmitted power. The measurement results indicate that the sensitivity of the power meter output voltage to the applied strain is 6.37 pV με⁻¹.

We propose a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor array system using a high-speed swept light source. The light source is an external cavity semiconductor laser using an optical fiber coupling with a Littrow-mounted grating spectroscope, where the fiber end is vibrated in the cantilever bending mode using a piezoelectric transducer. The incident angle to the grating is scanned at an ultrasonic frequency, and the output wavelength is swept according to the vibration displacement amplitude. The maximum sweep rate of 172 kHz was achieved for the sweep range of 70 nm. In this paper, the light source is used for high-speed and high sensitivity FBG sensor interrogation. First, to test the operation of the proposed FBG sensor, the center wavelength variation due to temperature shift is measured in water. Second, we experimentally demonstrate the measurements of dynamic strain oscillating at 10 and 28 kHz. The observation of high frequency vibrations is achieved with a sufficient sampling rate.

A robust Raman fibre laser (RFL) for tunable and multiple outputs has been proposed using an all-fibre asymmetric cavity which is composed of a wideband chirped fibre Bragg grating (CFBG) and narrowband tunable fibre Bragg gratings (TFBGs). The wideband CFBG has high reflectivity across the spectral range from 1404 to 1465 nm as an input reflector. Output couplers (OCs) consist of three TFBGs with center wavelengths of 1410, 1425 and 1440 nm, respectively, which can each be tuned over 10 nm. The output power and wavelength can be flexibly controlled by tuning of TFBGs in the 14xx nm band.

A low-frequency magnetic field sensor, based on a current-carrying beam driven by the Lorentzian force, is described. The amplitude of the oscillation is measured by a distributed-feedback fiber laser strain sensor attached to the beam. The transduction mechanism of the sensor is derived analytically using conventional beam theory, which is shown to accurately predict the responsivity of a prototype sensor. Excellent linearity and negligible hysteresis are demonstrated. Noise sources in the fiber laser strain sensor are described and thermo-mechanical noise in the transducer is estimated. The prototype sensor achieves a magnetic field resolution of 5 nT Hz for 25 mA of current, which is shown to be close to the predicted thermo-mechanical noise limit of the sensor. The current is supplied optically through a separate optical fiber yielding an electrically passive sensor head.