High sensitivity of a distributed optical-fiber vibration sensing (DOVS) system based on the phase-sensitivity optical time domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) technology also brings in high nuisance alarm rates (NARs) in real applications. In this paper, feature extraction methods of wavelet decomposition (WD) and wavelet packet decomposition (WPD) are comparatively studied for three typical field testing signals, and an artificial neural network (ANN) is built for the event identification. The comparison results prove that the WPD performs a little better than the WD for the DOVS signal analysis and identification in oil pipeline safety monitoring. The identification rate can be improved up to 94.4%, and the nuisance alarm rate can be effectively controlled as low as 5.6% for the identification network with the wavelet packet energy distribution features.

Phase-sensitive optical time domain reflectometry (Ф-OTDR) is an effective way to detect vibrations and acoustic waves with high sensitivity, by interrogating coherent Rayleigh backscattering light in sensing fiber. In particular, fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) based on the Ф-OTDR with phase demodulation has been extensively studied and widely used in intrusion detection, borehole seismic acquisition, structure health monitoring, etc., in recent years, with superior advantages such as long sensing range, fast response speed, wide sensing bandwidth, low operation cost and long service lifetime. Significant advances in research and development (R&D) of Ф-OTDR have been made since 2014. In this review, we present a historical review of Ф-OTDR and then summarize the recent progress of Ф-OTDR in the Fiber Optics Research Center (FORC) at University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), which is the first group to carry out R&D of Ф-OTDR and invent ultra-sensitive DAS (uDAS) seismometer in China which is elected as one of the ten most significant technology advances of PetroChina in 2019. It can be seen that the Ф-OTDR/DAS technology is currently under its rapid development stage and would reach its climax in the next 5 years.

An overview of recent researches of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing technology in Laboratory of Science and Technology of Micro-Nano Optics (LMNO), University of Science and Technology of China, is presented. Some novel SPR sensors, such as sensors based on metallic grating, metal-insulator-metal (MIM) nanoring and optical fiber, are designed or fabricated and tested. The sensor based on localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of metallic nanoparticles is also be summarized. Because of the coupling of propagating surface plasmons and localized surface plasmons, the localized electromagnetic field is extremely enhanced, which is applied to surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and fluorenscence enhancement. Future prospects of SPR and/or LSPR sensing developments and applications are also discussed.

Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) array is a powerful technique for quasi-distributed sensing along the entire length of sensing fiber with fast response and high precision. It has been widely used for temperature, strain, and vibration monitoring. In this review work, an overview on the recent advances of FBG arrays is conducted. Firstly, the fabrication methods of FBG array are reviewed, which include femtosecond laser system and online writing technique. Then, the demodulation techniques for FBG arrays are presented and discussed. Distributed static sensing can be performed by demodulating wavelength shift of each FBG, while phase demodulation techniques with low noise are employed for dynamic vibration sensing. Simultaneous distributed dynamic and static sensing system based on FBG array is also outlined. Finally, possible future directions are discussed and concluded. It is believed that the FBG array has great development potential and application prospect.

This paper proposes a hexagonal photonic crystal fiber (H-PCF) structure with high relative sensitivity for liquid sensing; in which both core and cladding are microstructures. Numerical investigation is carried out by employing the full vectorial finite element method (FEM). The analysis has been done in four stages of the proposed structure. The investigation shows that the proposed structure achieves higher relative sensitivity by increasing the diameter of the innermost ring air holes in the cladding. Moreover, placing a single channel instead of using a group of tiny channels increases the relative sensitivity effectively. Investigating the effects of different parameters, the optimized structure shows significantly higher relative sensitivity with a low confinement loss.

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on the blue phosphorene/MoS₂ hetero-structure is presented to enhance the performance parameters, i.e., sensitivity, detection accuracy, and quality factor. The blue phosphorene/MoS₂ hetero-structure works as an interacting layer with the analyte for the enhancement of the sensitivity of the sensor. It is observed that the sensitivity of blue phosphorene/MoS₂ based sensor (i.e., structure-II) is improved by 5.75%, from the conventional sensor (i.e., structure-III). Further, an additional silicon nanolayer is introduced between the metal layer and blue phosphorene/MoS₂ hetero-structure. The sensitivity of the proposed blue phosphorene/MoS₂ hetero-structure with a silicon layer SPR sensor, i.e., structure-I, is enhanced by 44.76% from structure-II and 55.75% from structure-III due to an enhancement in the evanescent field near the metal-analyte interface. Finally, it is observed that at the optimum thickness of silicon between the gold layer and blue phosphorene/MoS₂, performance parameters of the sensor are enhanced.

Different types of fiber-optic sensors based on glass or polymeric fibers are used to evaluate material behavior or to monitor the integrity and long-term stability of load-bearing structure components. Fiber-optic sensors have been established as a new and innovative measurement technology in very different fields, such as material science, civil engineering, light-weight structures, geotechnical areas as well as chemical and high-voltage substations. Very often, mechanical quantities such as deformation, strain or vibration are requested. However, measurement of chemical quantities in materials and structure components, such as pH value in steel reinforced concrete members also provides information about the integrity of concrete structures. A special fiber-optic chemical sensor for monitoring the alkaline state (pH value) of the cementitious matrix in steel-reinforced concrete structures with the purpose of early detection of corrosion-initiating factors is described. The paper presents the use of several fiber-optic sensor technologies in engineering. One example concerns the use of highly resolving concrete-embeddable fiber Fabry-Perot acoustic emission (AE) sensors for the assessment of the bearing behaviour of large concrete piles in existing foundations or during and after its installation. Another example concerns fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors attached to anchor steels (micro piles) to measure the strain distribution in loaded soil anchors. Polymer optical fibers (POF) can be — because of their high elasticity and high ultimate strain — well integrated into textiles to monitor their deformation behaviour. Such “intelligent” textiles are capable of monitoring displacement of soil or slopes, critical mechanical deformation in geotechnical structures (dikes, dams, and embankments) as well as in masonry structures during and after earthquakes.

Fiber-optic hydrophone (FOH) is a significant type of acoustic sensor, which can be used in both military and civilian fields such as underwater target detection, oil and natural gas prospecting, and earthquake inspection. The recent progress of FOH is introduced from five aspects, including large-scale FOH array, very-low-frequency detection, fiber-optic vector hydrophone (FOVH), towed linear array, and deep-sea and long-haul transmission. The above five aspects indicate the future development trends in the FOH research field, and they also provide a guideline for the practical applications of FOH as well as its array.

A brief review on biconical tapered fiber sensors for biosensing applications is presented. A variety of configurations and formats of this sensor have been devised for label free biosensing based on measuring small refractive index changes. The biconical nonadiabatic tapered optical fiber offers a number of favorable properties for optical sensing, which have been exploited in several biosensing applications, including cell, protein, and DNA sensors. The types of these sensors present a low-cost fiber biosensor featuring a miniature sensing probe, label-free direct detection, and high sensitivity.

A refractive index sensor based on Fano resonances in metal-insulator-metal (MIM) waveguides coupled with rectangular and dual side rings resonators is proposed. The sensing properties are numerically simulated by the finite element method (FEM). For the interaction of the narrow-band spectral response and the broadband spectral response caused by the side-coupled resonators and the rectangular resonator, respectively, the transmission spectra exhibit a sharp and asymmetric profile. Results are analyzed using the coupled-mode theory based on the transmission line theory. The coupled mode theory is employed to explain the Fano resonance effect. The results show that with an increase in the refractive index of the fill dielectric material in the slot of the system, the Fano resonance peak exhibits a remarkable red shift. Through the optimization of structural parameters, we achieve a theoretical value of the refractive index sensitivity (S) as high as 1160 nm/RIU, and the corresponding sensing resolution is 8.62 × 10^–5 RIU. In addition, the coupled MIM waveguide structure can be easily extended to other similar compact structures to realize the sensing task and integrated with other photonic devices at the chip scale. This work paves the way toward the sensitive nanometer scale refractive index sensor for design and application.

Oxygen and carbon dioxide sensors are involved in many chemical and biochemical reactions. Consequently, considerable efforts over years have been devoted to discover and improve suitable techniques for measuring gas concentrations by optical fiber sensors. Optical gas sensors consist of a gas-sensitive dye entrapped in a matrix with a high permeability to gas. With such sensors, gas concentration is evaluated based upon the reduction in luminescence intensity caused by gas quenching of the emitting state. However, the luminescence quenching effect of oxygen is highly sensitive to temperature. Thus, a simple, low-cost plastic optical fiber sensor for dual sensing of temperature and oxygen is presented. Also, a modified Stern-Volmer model is introduced to compensate for the temperature drift while the temperature is obtained by above dual sensor. Recently, we presented highly-sensitive oxygen and dissolved oxygen sensors comprising an optical fiber coated at one end with platinum (II) meso-tetrakis(pentafluorophenyl)porphyrin (PtTFPP) and PtTFPP entrapped core-shell silica nanoparticles embedded in an n-octyltriethoxysilane(Octyl-triEOS)/tetraethylorthosilane (TEOS) composite xerogel. Also, two-dimensional gas measurement for the distribution of chemical parameters in non-homogeneous samples is developed and is of interest in medical and biological researches.

In this work, we have evaluated the biosensing capability of the porous silicon (PSi) based sidewall Bragg-grating resonator. The approximation of the quasi-TE mode full vector for the eigenmode calculation is performed using a full vector mode solver. The transmission spectra of the device are evaluated using the transfer matrix method. We have observed a shift in the resonant band for a change in the refractive index of biomaterial in the upper cladding region. The theoretical value of the bulk sensitivity is calculated to be 387.48 nm/RIU. The device is suitable for biosensing application due to its ability of interacting signal with the infiltrated analytes in the PSi waveguide core.

In this paper, we review our researches on the topics of the structural health monitoring (SHM) with the fiber-optic distributed strain sensor. Highly-dense information on strains in a structure can be useful to identify some kind of existing damages or applied loads in implementation of SHM. The fiber-optic distributed sensors developed by the authors have been applied to the damage detection of a single-lap joint and load identification of a beam simply supported. We confirmed that the applicability of the distributed sensor to SHM could be improved as making the spatial resolution higher. In addition, we showed that the simulation technique considering both structural and optical effects seamlessly in strain measurement could be powerful tools to evaluate the performance of a sensing system and design it for SHM. Finally, the technique for simultaneous distributed strain and temperature measurement using the PANDA-fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is shown in this paper, because problems caused by the cross-sensitivity toward strain and temperature would be always inevitable in strain measurement for SHM.

This paper details some significant findings on the use of the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM) in aerospace fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) structures. A diminutive sensor provides a capability of imbedding inside FRP structures to monitor vital locations of damage. Some practical problems associated with the implementation of FBG based SHM systems in the aerospace FRP structures such as the difficulty of embedding FBG sensors during the manufacturing process and interrelation of distortion to FBG spectra due to internal damage, and other independent effects will be thoroughly studied. An innovative method to interpret FBG signals for identifying damage inside the structures will also be discussed.

The authors review their recent advances in the development of optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor technologies. After a brief review of the fiber grating sensors, several newly developed FBG sensors are described. With the continuous development of fiber materials, microstructures and post-processing technologies, FBG sensors are still creative after the first demonstration of permanent gratings thirty years ago.

Optical fiber sensing technology has developed rapidly since the 1980s with the development of the optical fiber and fiber optical communication technology. It is a new type of sensing technology that uses light as a carrier and optical fiber as a medium to sense and transmit external signals (measurands). Distributed fiber optical sensors (DFOS) can continuously measure the external physical parameters distributed along the geometric path of the optical fiber. Meanwhile, the spatial distribution and change information of the measured physical parameters over time can be obtained. This technology has unmatched advantages over traditional point-wise and electrical measurement monitoring technologies. This paper summarizes the state-of-the-art research of the application of the distributed optical fiber sensing technology in geo-engineering in the past 10 years, mainly including the advantages of DFOS, the challenges in geo-engineering monitoring, related fundamental theoretical issues, sensing performance of the optical sensing cables, distributed optical fiber monitoring system for geo-engineering, and applications of optical fiber sensing technology in geo-engineering.

The “lab-on-fiber” concept envisions novel and highly functionalized technological platforms completely integrated in a single optical fiber that would allow the development of advanced devices, components and sub-systems to be incorporated in modern optical systems for communication and sensing applications. The realization of integrated optical fiber devices requires that several structures and materials at nano- and micro-scale are constructed, embedded and connected all together to provide the necessary physical connections and light-matter interactions. This paper reviews the strategies, the main achievements and related devices in the lab-on-fiber roadmap discussing perspectives and challenges that lie ahead.

Optical logic gates are elementary components for optical network and optical computing. In this paper, we propose a structure for AND, NAND, XNOR and NOR logic gates in the two dimensional photonic crystal which utilizes the dispersion based self-collimation effect. The self-collimated beam is splitted by the line defect and interfered with other self-collimated beam. This interference may be constructive or destructive based on their phase difference. This phenomenon is employed to realize all-optical logic gates. The gates are demonstrated numerically by computing electromagnetic field distribution using the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The results ensure that this design can function as AND, NAND, XNOR and NOR logic gates. The size of the structure is about 10 μm × 10 μm which in turn results in an increase in the speed and all the gates are realized in the same configuration. The ON-OFF contrast ratio is about 6 dB.

In this paper, we have proposed a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) pressure sensor which consists of two plasmonic waveguides and a double square ring resonator. The two square rings are connected via a rectangular patch located between the two of them. The surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) can be transferred from a square ring to the other through this patch. The finite-difference time-domain method (FDTD) has been used to simulate the device. Applying a pressure on the structure, it deforms, and a red shift of 103 nm in the resonance wavelength has been calculated. The deformation is linearly proportional to the wavelength shift in a wide range of wavelength. The proposed optical plasmonic pressure sensor has a sensitivity of 16.5 nm/MPa which makes it very suitable for using in biological and biomedical engineering.

Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is the most widely used optical fiber sensor due to its compact size, high sensitivity, and easiness for multiplexing. Conventional FBGs fabricated by using an ultraviolet (UV) laser phase-mask method require the sensitization of the optical fiber and could not be used at high temperatures. Recently, the fabrication of FBGs by using a femtosecond laser has attracted extensive interests due to its excellent flexibility in creating FBGs array or special FBGs with complex spectra. The femtosecond laser could also be used for inscribing various FBGs on almost all fiber types, even fibers without any photosensitivity. Such femtosecond-laser-induced FBGs exhibit excellent thermal stability, which is suitable for sensing in harsh environment. In this review, we present the historical developments and recent advances in the fabrication technologies and sensing applications of femtosecond-laser-inscribed FBGs. Firstly, the mechanism of femtosecond-laser-induced material modification is introduced. And then, three different fabrication technologies, i.e., femtosecond laser phase mask technology, femtosecond laser holographic interferometry, and femtosecond laser direct writing technology, are discussed. Finally, the advances in high-temperature sensing applications and vector bending sensing applications of various femtosecond-laser-inscribed FBGs are summarized. Such femtosecond-laser-inscribed FBGs are promising in many industrial areas, such as aerospace vehicles, nuclear plants, oil and gas explorations, and advanced robotics in harsh environments.

The distributed sensor is proven to be a powerful tool for civil structural and material process monitoring. Brillouin scattering in fiber can be used as point sensors or distributed sensors for measurement of temperature, strain, birefringence and vibration over centimeters (Brillouin grating length) for point sensor or the pulse length for the distributed sensor. Simultaneous strain and temperature measurement with a spatial resolution of 20 cm is demonstrated in a Panda fiber using Brillouin grating technique with the temperature accuracy and strain accuracy of 0.4 °C and 9 μɛ. This technique can also be used for distributed birefringence measurement. For Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA), we have developed a new technique to measure differential Brillouin gain instead of Brillouin gain itself. This technique allows high precision temperature and strain measurement over long sensing length with sub-meter spatial resolution: 50-cm spatial resolution for 50-km length, using return-to-zero coded optical pulses of BOTDA with the temperature resolution of 0.7 °C, which is equivalent to strain accuracy of 12 μɛ. For over 50-km sensing length, we proposed and demonstrated frequency-division-multiplexing (FDM) and time-division-multiplexing (TDM) based BOTDA technique for 75-km and 100-km sensing length without inline amplification within the sensing length. The spatial resolution of 2 m (100 km) and Brillouin frequency shift accuracy of 1.5 MHz have been obtained for TDM based BOTDA and 1-m resolution (75 km) with Brillouin frequency shift accuracy of 1 MHz using FDM based BOTDA. The civil structural health monitoring with BOTDA technique has been demonstrated.

Tuberculosis is one of the most contagious and lethal illnesses in the world, according to the World Health Organization. Tuberculosis had the leading mortality rate as a result of a single infection, ranking above HIV/AIDS. Early detection is an essential factor in patient treatment and can improve the survival rate. Detection methods should have high mobility, high accuracy, fast detection, and low losses. This work presents a novel biomedical photonic crystal fiber sensor, which can accurately detect and distinguish between the different types of tuberculosis bacteria. The designed sensor detects these types with high relative sensitivity and negligible losses compared to other photonic crystal fiber-based biomedical sensors. The proposed sensor exhibits a relative sensitivity of 90.6%, an effective area of 4.342×10⁻⁸m², with a negligible confinement loss of 3.13×10⁻⁹cm⁻¹, a remarkably low effective material loss of 0.0132cm⁻¹, and a numerical aperture of 0.3462. The proposed sensor is capable of operating in the terahertz regimes over a wide range (1 THz–2.4THz). An abbreviated review of non-optical detection techniques is also presented. An in-depth comparison between this work and recent related photonic crystal fiber-based literature is drawn to validate the efficacy and authenticity of the proposed design.

Hydrogen is one of the next generation energies in the future, which shows promising applications in aerospace and chemical industries. Hydrogen leakage monitoring is very dangerous and important because of its low ignition energy, high combustion efficiency, and smallest molecule. This paper reviews the state-of-art development of the fiber optic hydrogen sensing technology. The main developing trends of fiber optic hydrogen sensors are based on two kinds of hydrogen sensitive materials, i.e. palladium-alloy thin films and Pt-doped WO₃ coatings. In this review work, the advantages and disadvantages of these two kinds of sensing technologies will be evaluated.

In this paper, a two-dimensional photonic crystal (2DPC) based pressure sensor is proposed and designed, and the sensing characteristics such as the sensitivity and dynamic range are analyzed over the range of pressure from 0 GPa to 7 GPa. The sensor is based on 2DPC with the square array of silicon rods surrounded by air. The sensor consists of two photonic crystal quasi waveguides and L3 defect. The L3 defect is placed in between two waveguides and is formed by modifying the radius of three Si rods. It is noticed that through simulation, the resonant wavelength of the sensor is shifted linearly towards the higher wavelength region while increasing the applied pressure level. The achieved sensitivity and dynamic range of the sensor is 2 nm/GPa and 7 Gpa, respectively.

We report our recent work on distributed feedback fiber laser based hydrophones. Some issues related to sensitivity, such as fiber laser phase condition, demodulation, and packaging, are also discussed. With the development of appropriate digital signal processing (DSP) techniques and packaging designs, an interferometric-type distributed feedback (DFB) fiber laser hydrophone system with acoustic sensitivity of 58.0 dB·re·μPa·Hz^−0.5 at 1 kHz or a minimum detectable acoustic pressure below 800 μPa during field test is attained. We have also investigated an intensity-type DFB fiber laser hydrophone system and its performance.

Fiber laser hydrophones have got widespread concerns due to the unique advantages and broad application prospects. In this paper, the research results of the eight-element multiplexed fiber laser acoustic pressure array and the interrogation system are introduced, containing low-noise distributed feedback fiber laser (DFB-FL) fabrication, sensitivity enhancement packaging, and interferometric signal demodulation. The frequency response range of the system is 10Hz–10kHz, the laser frequency acoustic pressure sensitivity reaches 115 dB re Hz/Pa, and the equivalent noise acoustic pressure is less than 60μPa/Hz^1/2. The dynamic range of the system is greater than 120 dB.

Fiber optic sensors have a set of properties that make them very attractive in biomechanics. However, they remain unknown to many who work in the field. Some possible causes are scarce information, few research groups using them in a routine basis, and even fewer companies offering turnkey and affordable solutions. Nevertheless, as optical fibers revolutionize the way of carrying data in telecommunications, a similar trend is detectable in the world of sensing. The present review aims to describe the most relevant contributions of fiber sensing in biomechanics since their introduction, from 1960s to the present, focusing on intensity-based configurations. An effort has been made to identify key researchers, research and development (R&D) groups and main applications.

Recently, many programs have been developed for simulation or analysis of the different parameters of light propagation in optical fibers, either for sensing or for communication purposes. In this paper, it is shown the COMSOL Multiphysics as a fairly robust and simple program, due to the existence of a graphical environment, to perform simulations with good accuracy. Results are compared with other simulation analysis, focusing on the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomena for refractive index sensing in a D-type optical fiber, where the characteristics of the material layers, in terms of the type and thickness, and the residual fiber cladding thickness are optimized.

An index guiding photonic crystal fiber used in gas sensing applications is presented. The dependency of the confinement loss and relative sensitivity on the fiber parameters and wavelength is numerically investigated by using the full-vectorial finite element method (FEM). The simulations showed that the gas sensing sensitivity increased with an increase in the core diameter and a decrease in the distance between centers of two adjacent holes. Increasing the hole size of two outer cladding rings, this structure simultaneously showed up to 10% improved sensitivity, and the confinement loss reached 6×10⁻⁴ times less than that of the prior sensor at the wavelength of 1.5 μm. This proved the ability of this fiber used in gas and chemicals sensing applications.

Optical fiber sensors have attracted considerable attention in health monitoring of aerospace composite structures. This paper briefly reviews our recent advancement mainly in Brillouin-based distributed sensing. Damage detection, life cycle monitoring and shape reconstruction systems applicable to large-scale composite structures are presented, and new technical concepts, “smart crack arrester” and “hierarchical sensing system”, are described as well, highlighting the great potential of optical fiber sensors for the structural health monitoring (SHM) field.