A compact fiber sensor based on the high birefringence polarization maintaining fiber for simultaneous strain and temperature measurement

A compact high birefringence polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) sensor for simultaneous strain and temperature measurement is proposed. This sensor is a modal interferometer (MI) sensor which is composed of a segment of high birefringence polarization maintaining fiber. One side of the fiber is spliced to the pigtail of a polarization beam splitter (PBS) with core-offset and axes alignment, the other end is spliced to the standard single-mode fiber (SMF) with core alignment and forms a fiber bubble. In experiments, an optical switch and the PBS are used to generate two orthogonal linear polarized lights. When the two orthogonal linear polarized lights enter the sensing fiber respectively, two different interference spectra will be achieved and own different response to the strain and temperature. Using these properties, the sensor realizes the simultaneous strain and temperature measurement. For 0.01 nm wavelength resolution, the strain and temperature resolution of the sensor are 10 u epsilon and 0.285 degrees C, respectively.