Optik 123 (2012) 21052108

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Optik
journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ijleo

Theoretical and experimental studies on coupler based ber optic displacement

sensor with concave mirror
S.W. Harun a,b, , H.Z. Yang b , H. Arof a , H. Ahmad b
a
b

Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Photonics Research Center, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 29 April 2011
Accepted 4 October 2011

Keywords:
Fiber-optic displacement sensor
Multimode coupler
Concave mirror
Refractive index sensor

a b s t r a c t
A new ber optic displacement sensor (FODS) is proposed and demonstrated using a multimode ber
coupler as a sensor probe and a concave mirror as a reective target. A mathematical model is also
developed to investigate the performance of proposed FODS at various coupling ratio, ber diameter, and
surrounding media. Three slopes are obtained for the displacement response where the third slope starts
at a displacement position of twice the focal length. The numerical results show that higher performance is
attained at lower coupler ratio of 50:50 or smaller core diameter. The results also show that the proposed
FODS has a potential application in liquid and gas chemical sensors. The experimental performances are
also investigated for the proposed sensor where it is observed that the second peak of the displacement
curve is located at exactly two times of the focal length or 20 mm.
2011 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In recent years, research in ber optic sensors has gained
considerable attention due to high sensitivity, detection speed
and accuracy of the optical sensors even in extreme conditions.
Other advantages of optical ber sensors include compactness, low
cost and compatibility with other optical components that make
them an attractive instrument for sensing applications [1,2]. The
intensity-based ber optic sensors were the earliest and the most
widely used technology to date because of its low cost, easy installation and high sensitivity. Optical multimode polymer bundled
ber is typically used as a probe for this type of sensors due to
its inherent advantages such as better signal coupling, larger core
radii thereby receiving the maximum reected light from target,
and higher numerical aperture [3,4]. In addition, bundled bers
are capable of providing larger dynamic range of sensing and this
allows more accurate displacement measurement to be made [5].
Based on the merits of the multimode ber, it seems to be perfectly
suitable for optical displacement sensor application.
In the design of FODS system based on the intensity modulation,
many factors need to be considered. Generally, the performance of
this sensor is strongly dependent on the ambient light (noise) and
on the relative position of the optical ber bundle and reective
surface. However, the reectivity of the surface also plays a role.
Thus, in the evolution of FODSs, approaches used to achieve high

Corresponding author at: Dept. of Electrical Engineering, University of Malaya,

50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
E-mail address: swharun@um.edu.my (S.W. Harun).
0030-4026/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijleo.2011.10.006

sensitivity and large linear range are normally divided into three
categories, namely, methods that emphasize on the selection of
laser sources [68], the design of sensor probes [9,10] and the different types target reectors used [11,12]. In this paper, a new FODS
is proposed using a multimode polymer ber coupler as a sensor
probe and a concave mirror as a reector. A mathematical model is
developed to investigate the performance of the proposed FODS at
various coupling ratio, ber diameter, and surrounding media. The
performance of the proposed FODS is also theoretically compared
to the FODSs congured using either bundled ber or a at mirror.
The theoretical result is also veried experimentally.

2. Theoretical analysis
Fig. 1 shows the conguration of the proposed FODS using a coupler and a concave mirror as a probe and a reector, respectively.
The geometrical structure of the probe and the concave mirror is
shown in Fig. 2 where, the longitudinal axis of sensor probe coincides with the normal axis of the concave mirror. As shown in the
gure, light is emitted from point at a distance of za from the ber
surface end. After being reected by the concave mirror, the light
is concentrated at point O and virtually becomes another emitting
point source, then collected by the sensor probe P where P functions
both for transmitting and receiving the light.
Geometrically, the distance between the sensor probe tip and
the virtual laser source O can be determined by;
z =u

f (u + za )
u f + za

(1)

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S.W. Harun et al. / Optik 123 (2012) 21052108

Fig. 3. Performance comparison of the coupler and pair bers bundled as sensor
probe.

Fig. 1. Conguration of the proposed FODS.

Combining Eq. (4) and Eq. (8), the power collected from port B
is realized as,
PBc (u) = PAB + PCB P(u)

(9)

3. Theoretical results

Fig. 2. Geometrical structure between port C of the coupler and concave mirror.

where f denotes the focal length of the concave mirror while u is

the distance between the sensor probe tip and concave mirror. The
acceptance angle of the light cone from the virtual point source O ,
  is given by
  (z) = tan1

 u + z f 
a
f

tan 

(2)

where  = sin1 (NA/n) and NA is the numerical aperture of the

transmitting ber and n is the refractive index of the surrounding
medium. The relative distance (dimensionless) between the ber
tip and the virtual laser source O is given by variable zd where
zd =

R
tan(  (z)) z
=
r
r

(3)

and R is the radius of virtual laser source illumination area on the

distance z of ber end, r is the radius of ber. Therefore, the transfer
function of the proposed FODS can be derived as,

P(u) = 1 exp

(zd + 1)2

(4)

When port A is the input port as shown in Fig. 1, the output

power of throughput port C according to the theory of ber optic
coupler, is given as
PEC =

m
PE 10El /10
m+n

(5)

where PE is the output power of laser source, El is the excess loss

of port A, m and n are the spitting ratio m:n of the coupler. Assuming the directionality loss is 40 dB, the back reected light at the
receiving ber of port B is assumed to be;
PAB = PE 104

(6)

The amount of the reected light from the concave mirror, which
is collected by port C and route to port B is given by;
PCB =

n
PEC 10El /10
m+n

(7)

Hence, the total power transmitted from port B is the sum of

PAB and PCB
PB = PAB + PCB

(8)

The mathematical model of the proposed sensor is simulated

using MATLAB programming. In the simulation, the focal length
and diameter of the concave mirror are set at 10 mm and 24 mm
respectively, while the wavelength and average output power of
the light source are xed at 594 nm and 3 mW, respectively. The corresponding core and cladding refractive indices of the ber coupler
are 1.492 and 1.402 with an excess loss El of 1.6 dB. The theoretical
results are shown in Fig. 3 for three different arrangements; coupler probe with a concave mirror, coupler probe with a at mirror
and bundled ber probe with a concave mirror. The port C probe
of Fig. 1 is assumed to re-capture all the emitted light at zero displacement and thus the output intensity of port B is normalised
in 1 at this position as shown in Fig. 3. This is attributed to the
use of ber coupler, which allows only port C probe to transmit
and receive the light and causes the core of the sensor probe to be
totally immersed into the reected light circle [6] at zero displacement. As the displacement increases from 0 to 1.5 mm, the intensity
of the collected light reduces. At the displacement of close to 20 mm
(twice the focal length), the concave mirror focuses the light at the
center of the ber probe to collect all of the reected light from the
mirror. Hence, the intensity curve peaks at this displacement point.
The performance of the FODS with a at-mirror, which is simulated by assuming the focal length f of Eq. (2) to be innity, shares
a similar trend to the concave mirror in the displacement range of
0 to 1.5 mm. For further displacement, the curve of the at mirror
is horizontally at or unchanged in intensity, however, the use of
concave mirror provides another peak in the displacement of close
to 20 mm. This peak shows that the proposed FODS can provide
a larger displacement measurement range, which may be suitable
for certain applications. With the use of bundled ber, the displacement curve shows a dip at the peak region of the proposed FODS.
At a smaller displacement region, the resolution of the sensor is
smaller with the coupler compared to that of the bundled ber.
This is attributed to the smaller light emitted radius for the coupler, which has a smaller radial distance r as opposed to that of
bundled ber when the Gaussian beam is used to approximate the
emitted ray prole. The theoretical displacement curve of the FODS
with bundled ber is simulated using a theoretical analysis from
our earlier work [10].
Fig. 4 shows the displacement response of the proposed sensor
at various coupling ratio of the coupler; 50:50, 20:80 and 10:90
couplers. As shown in Fig. 4, the coupling ratio of 50:50 provides the
highest collected light intensity at port B, and the received power
decreases as the coupling ratio of port D is increased from 50 to

S.W. Harun et al. / Optik 123 (2012) 21052108

Fig. 4. Effects of different coupler ratio on the performance of the proposed FODS.

90% at both displacement positions of 0 and 20 mm. It is shown

that the coupling ratio plays an important role in designing the
proposed FODS, where lower coupling ratio of coupler provides a
higher sensitivity. Fig. 5 shows the performance of the proposed
sensor at different ber radius of the coupler. As shown in the gure,
the curve of r = 0.25 mm has the lowest received power of 0.3 105
as compared to the highest output intensity of 2.9 105 , which
is obtained at a larger diameter of r = 0.75 mm due to the smaller
relative distance of zd . It is also observed that the best sensitivity is
obtained at r = 0.25 mm since the slope is sharper. Hence, to achieve
a higher sensitivity in the design of FODS with coupler and concave
mirror, ber with a small diameter is recommended.
Fig. 6 shows the performance of the proposed sensor at three different refractive indices for the gap between the probe and target.
The refractive index of the gap affects the performance of the sensor since three different curves are observed. The lower refractive
index provides the low output intensity. As can be seen, the highest
sensitivity is obtained when refractive index is equal to 1. A good
displacement response is also observed at refractive index of 1.33.
Since most of the refractive indices of gas and liquid are in this area,
the proposed FODS should have many applications as a chemical
sensor for high pressure H2 , HF, NaOH, or organic solvents, etc.

2107

Fig. 7. Experiment results of proposed FODS at various coupling ratio (CR).

4. Experimental verication
As shown in Fig. 1, the experiment setup consists of a HeNe
laser, an external chopper, a ber coupler, a concave mirror, a lockin amplier and a silicon detector. The chopper is used to modulate
the light at a frequency of 200 Hz before being launched into the
transmitting ber. A concave mirror is located at the other-side of
the coupler to reect and focus the transmitted light into the sensor
probe. The receiving ber or port B of the coupler routes the collected light of sensor probe into the photo detector which converts
the light power into voltage. A lock-in amplier is connected with
the chopper and photo detector to act as a data-acquisition system.
It functions to match the phase between the modulation light and
the modulator chopper and removes the noise generated by the
laser source, photo detector and amplier. A translation stage is
used in the experiment to provide multi-axial displacement control
for alignment.
To verify the numerical results of Fig. 4, three experiments are
carried out for different ber coupler ratios of 50:50, 20:80 and
10:90. The experimental results are shown in Fig. 7. Comparing
Figs. 4 and 7, it is observed that the experimental results are highly
in agreement with the theoretical results. The second peak of experimental curves is exactly located at the displacement of two time
of focal length or 20 mm. In theoretical curves of Fig. 4, the peaks
are located slightly shorter than 20 mm, which may be attributed
to the approximation used in the numerical calculation. The lowest
output intensity of the experimental curves is obtained at approximately 0.2 mW instead of 0 for the theoretical value. The value is
most probably due to the noise intensities and the coupled power
from port A to port B during experiment.
5. Conclusion

Fig. 5. Performances of proposed sensor using bers of different radii.

A FODS is proposed based on a ber coupler as sensor probe

and a concave mirror as reective target. The theoretical analysis
is carried out to analyze the inuence of different coupler ratios,
ber diameters, as well as the surrounding media on the performance of the proposed FODS. The simulation result shows that the
performance is better with a lower coupler ratio of 50:50, smaller
core diameter or lower refractive index of the surrounding medium.
Three slopes are obtained for the displacement response where
the third slope starts at a displacement position of twice of the
focal length. The results of theoretical and experimental are well in
agreement and show that the proposed FODS is capable of offering
quantitative guidance for the design and implementation of FODS.
The experimental results show that the second peak of displacement curves is located at an exact displacement location of two
times the focal length or 20 mm.
References

Fig. 6. The performances of proposed sensor inuenced from the different surrounded media.

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