Two Main Types of Optical Sensors (1)

Extrinsic .In fiber optic sensing, when the transducer is external to the fiber it is referred to as extrinsic sensing. This occurs when the fibers are only recognizing and transmitting the sensed information.

we can see how the environmental signal is detected by the light modulator which prints this information into the light beam and is carried through the optical fiber to an optical and/or electronic processor.

The information can be in printed into the light beam in a great variety of ways, for example: in terms of intensity, phase, frequency, polarization, spectral content, etc.When the sensors are internal or embedded into the fibers they are called intrinsic sensors. Intrinsic sensors make sure that all of the light stays within the fiber and they share the same housing. Examples of these include the ability to sense strain or displacement.

we can see how the environmental signal is perceived by the fiber optic itself (in this case the fiber optic works as the light modulator in figure 1), therefore this intrinsic sensor can be classified as a distributed sensor, since it allows the measurement to take place in any point along the optic fiber.

August 16, 2011

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