Abstract

Numerous optical fibre sensors for a wide variety of physical measurands have been developed over the past decade. However industrial implementation of optical fibre sensors has been limited mainly to situations in which no suitable conventional electronic sensors were available. The advantages of fibre optic sensors over electronic sensors have long been recognized, including their immunity to electromagnetic interference and their intrinsic safety. Also the wide bandwidth of optical fibres allows a number of optical sensors to be multiplexed in a single scheme. Deployment of optical fibre sensors would be more economically attractive if they were part of a network of sensors, in which many sensors operated from the same instrumentation. Multiplexing schemes have been devised for various types of sensors, and require more complex instrumentation than that required for a single sensor.

© 1992 Optical Society of America