Interferometric high temperature sensor using suspended-core optical fibers

We propose and experimentally demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, high temperature fiber sensing using the multimode interference effect within a suspended-core microstructured optical fiber (SCF). Interference fringes were found to red-shift as the temperature increased and vice versa. Temperature sensing up to 1100°C was performed by measuring the wavelength shifts of the fringes after fast Fourier transform (FFT) filtering of the spectra. In addition, phase monitoring at the dominant spatial frequency in the Fourier spectrum was used as an interrogation method to monitor various temperature-change scenarios over a period of 80 hours. Our proposed high temperature fiber sensor is simple, cost-effective, and can operate at temperatures beyond 1000°C.