Interferometric Fiber-Optic Tilt Sensor Exploiting Taper and Lateral-Offset Fusing Splicing

Abstract

An ultra-sensitive and low cost optical fiber interferometric tilt sensor has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The tilt sensor was based on a taper and lateraloffset fusion splicing. The interference spectra of the proposed sensor under different tilt angles and directions have been measured and theoretically analyzed. Due to the asymmetrical configuration, the proposed device is orientation-dependent, and the tilt angle sensitivity reaches up to 1.15 nm/deg with the R2 value of 0.9931 no matter the sensor is operated in the -θ or +θ directions. Therefore, it will be a promising candidate for civil engineering, aviation industry, and automobile industry, especially, for the applications where a high sensitivity is required in a small measurement range.