IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO.

4, FEBRUARY 15, 2008 237

Environmentally Stable Fabry–Pérot-Type

Strain Sensor Based On Hollow-Core
Photonic Bandgap Fiber
Qing Shi, Fuyun Lv, Zhi Wang, Long Jin, Juan Juan Hu, Zhanyuan Liu, Guiyun Kai, and Xiaoyi Dong

Abstract—We design and demonstrate a miniature all-fiber

Fabry–Pérot (F-P) interferometric sensor based on hollow-core
photonic bandgap fiber where the strain is gauged by measuring
the spectrum shift of the reflected optical signal. The F-P cavity
in the order of millimeters is fabricated by simple techniques
of cleaving and fusion splicing. The sensitivity of the sensor is
1.55 pm/" at the wavelength of 1550 nm and the contrast of the
Fig. 1. Optical microscope longitudinal image of F-P-type strain sensor.
intensity reaches 4–6 dB. Temperature and bend insensitivity and
excellent repeatability of the sensor make it convenient for a wide
range of applications.
iment, the cavity length of the F-P sensor can be spliced from
Index Terms—Bend insensitivity, Fabry–Pérot (F-P), hollow-
core photonic bandgap fiber (HCPBF), strain sensor, temperature
0.2 mm to several millimeters easily. The free spectral range of
insensitivity. the F-P sensor reaches about 6 nm and the contrast of the inten-
sity achieves 4–6 dB.

I. INTRODUCTION II. SENSOR DESCRIPTION

The optical microscope image of the strain sensor is shown in

I NTERFEROMETRIC optical fiber sensors have the advan-

tages of high resolution, high sensitivity, intrinsic electrical
passivity, and immunity to electromagnetic interference. Op-
Fig. 1. A short air cavity formed by HCPBF between two SMFs
acts as an F-P interferometer, where light waves, reflected from
both cavity interfaces, interfere. The type of HCPBF, purchased
tical fiber sensors based on Fabry–Pérot (F-P) interferometry from Crystal Fibre A/S, part number HC-1550-02, has a hollow
have been reported using temperature, strain, pressure, and core diameter of 10.9 m and a mode overlap of 90% with the
biomolecules [1]–[3]. Hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber SMF.
(HCPBF) guiding light by the photonic bandgap effect has When the reflected surfaces of the fiber are parallel, the op-
attracted considerable interest in recent years. The property tical phase of interferometer F-P is described by
of guiding light in air has made such fibers very attractive for
high-power and low loss propagation [4]. (1)
In this letter, we present a novel design of environmentally
stable all-fiber F-P strain sensor. In addition, we experimen- where is the effective index of the fundamental mode prop-
tally investigate the performance of the strain sensor. Experi- agated in HCPBF, which is smaller than 1.0 but approximately
ment results match well with theoretical analysis. We splice sev- 1.0 [9], and is the cavity length. When is a certain peak
eral millimeters of HCPBF by the ubiquitous arc fusion splicer wavelength of the reflected spectrum which we detect in our ex-
[5] between single-mode fibers (SMFs) to form an F-P cavity. periment, the optical phase is set as ( is a fixed integer).
This type of sensor is sensitive to strain but insensitive to tem- The detected wavelength is
perature and bend. Moreover, the designed sensor also holds
advantages such as immunity to electromagnetic interference, (2)
radio-frequency interference, and radiation. Therefore, the pro-
posed sensor exhibits high environmental stability. In our exper-
the differential form of this equation is
Manuscript received September 5, 2007; revised October 19, 2007. This work (3)
was supported by the National Basic Research Programme of China under Grant
2003CB314906, by the 863 National High Technology Program of China under
Grant 2006AA01Z217, by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Strain-induced change in index and cavity length
under Grant 60677013, by the University Doctor Subject Scientific Research would lead to change in peak wavelength .
Foundation of China under Grant 20060055021, and by the Key Project of the
Ministry of Education of China under Grant 206006. Based on mechanics of materials, when longitudinal strain is
The authors are with the Institute of Physics, Nankai University, Tianjin applied to the cavity and the deformation on the cross section is
300071, China (e-mail: ivy@mail.nankai.edu.cn). neglected, can be estimated as follows:
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LPT.2007.913335 (4)

1041-1135/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE

238
Fig. 2. (a) Scanning electron microscope image of the HCPBF section.
(b) Quarter of the fiber cross section used in the finite-element modeling.
where is the longitudinal strain, is the longitudinal stress,
Gpa is the Young’s modulus of the fused silica, is
the longitudinal force, and is the area of silica on the section
which is about 7500 m in our experiment. Based on these for-
mulas and parameters, when we apply 2 longitudinal force
(the maximal force used in our experiment) on the sensor, the
value of is in the order of . Fig. 2(b) shows a quarter
of the fiber cross section used in the finite-element modeling. As
we apply the same longitudinal force on the sensor, we numeri-
cally simulate the change of the effective mode index with
the modeling by finite-element method [7]. The value of
is in the order of . It is two orders smaller than the value
of . So we neglect the effect of . According to (3) and
(4), the wavelength-strain sensitivity of the sensor can be calcu-
lated, i.e., 1.55 pm/ (the wavelength-force sensitivity of the
sensor is 2.8 nm/ ) at the wavelength of 1550 nm.
III. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION
In this letter, single-point strain sensor performance is inves-
tigated by bonding weight on one end of the SMF. The weight’s
gravitational force provides the longitudinal force . The exper-
imental setup and measurements of the F-P-type strain sensor
are shown in Fig. 3(a). The length of HCPBF is 0.2 mm. The
free-spectral range of F-P sensor is about 6 nm. One end of the
sensor was connected to a three-port optical circulator (OC),
while the other was loaded with different weights. Fig. 3(b)
demonstrates the measured plots. It is found that the wavelength
shift matches well with theoretical values that the change is
near-linear. The ripples of the reflected spectrum are possibly
introduced by both the optical source which we used in the ex-
periment and some mode interferences. The length of F-P cavity
(HCPBF) is from 0.2 to 5.5 mm. More experimental results are
shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The results indicate that repeatability of
the sensor is very good. Moreover, the tensile strength of the
IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO. 4, FEBRUARY 15, 2008
Fig. 3. (a) Experimental setup for the strain sensor. (BBS is the broadband
source and OSA is the optical spectrum analyzer.) (b) Wavelength shift when
we force strain on the HCPBF.
sensor is better than 2 . The sensor insertion loss is about
6–7 dB, but there are methods to improve it, such as employing
another kind of hollow-core fiber and improving the fusion tech-
nique to reduce the fusion loss [6]. The average reflection coef-
ficient of the proposed sensor is about 40 dB.
Fig. 4 shows the wavelength shift of the sensors with different
cavity lengths under different stresses. We note that the sensor
is sensitive to strain, and the peak wavelength shift is almost
linear within the measuring range. The slopes of the fitted lines
are all about 2.80 nm/ , agree well with the sensitivity com-
puted in Section II. The small deviation of the experimental re-
sults and theoretical values is caused by the section fusion area
and systematic error. If the section fusion area is smaller than
the section of the used fiber (caused by splice technology), fol-
lowed the above equations, the wavelength-force sensitivity of
the sensor will be higher. But the tensile strength of the sensor
will be decreased. In any case, all the proposed sensors hold
good linearity.
Fig. 5 shows the wavelength shift of the sensor under dif-
ferent temperatures and with different curvatures, respectively.
The bending curvature is measured using the method presented
in [8]. The sensor demonstrates low dependence on the temper-
ature and curvature. The slopes of the fitted lines are smaller
than 0.003 nm/ C and 0.015 nm/m . The main influence of
SHI et al.: ENVIRONMENTALLY STABLE F-P-TYPE STRAIN SENSOR BASED ON HCPBF
Fig. 4. Wavelength shift under different stress.
temperature on the sensor is through thermooptical effect. Since
the light guidance in the HCPBF is in the hollow core, and
the thermooptical constant of air is about zero, the sensor is
temperature-insensitive. Additionally, the HCPBF guides light
mainly in the hollow core whose diameter is 10.9 m. When
the sensor is bent, because the hollow core exists in the center
of the HCPBF, the length of the air cavity changes little. Ad-
ditionally, shorter length of HCPBF is more difficult to bend.
Consequently, bending has little contribution in the spectrum
shift of the reflected optical signal and the spectrum shift was
inconspicuous.
If we use a optical coupler to replace the OC, and
connect different free-spectral range sensors with -end of the
optical coupler, respectively, we can obtain the overlapped op-
tical signal. And the overlapped signal of different free-spectral
ranges could be demodulated by fast Fourier transform with
a computer. A quasi-distributed F-P-type strain sensor system
based on HCPBF can be realized. Based on [6], repeatable
cleaves with 1- m resolution are achieved with 40 micro-
scope. The resolution could help the proposed sensors achieve
wider free-spectrum range.
IV. CONCLUSION
This letter presents an environmentally stable all-fiber F-P
strain sensor. The sensor utilizes a short air cavity that is created
by an optimized fusion splicing of SMF and HCPBF. The strain
is measured by the reflected wavelength shift which results from
strain-induced cavity length variation. The wavelength shift of
the sensor is near-linear within the measurement range. Simple
fabrication technique and high sensitivity are the main advan-
tages of the strain sensor. The requirement for hollow-core fiber
is not very strictly due to the short length used in the sensor.
Temperature and bend independence make it convenient for a
wide range of applications. More applications of the F-P effect
based on the HCPBF, such as the laser, will be studied in our
future work.
239
Fig. 5. Wavelength shift under different (a) temperatures and (b) curvatures.
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