A fiber inclinometer using a fiber microtaper with an air-gap microcavity fiber interferometer

A micro-inclinometer is proposed and demonstrated experimentally; the device consists of a micro-fiber taper followed by an air-gap microcavity. A part of the core mode can couple to cladding modes via the taper. These cladding modes and residual core modes transmitted to downstream of the Fabry-Perot (FP) interferometer. A fraction of these modes are reflected back to the SMF by two surfaces of the FP cavity and eventually recoupled to the leading-in SMF, resulting in a well-defined interference spectrum. The fringe contrast of the interferometer is highly sensitive to fiber bending with direction-independence and thus is capable of measuring tilt angles in high resolution. In addition, the interference wavelength always remains unchanged during the fiber bending. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.