Acoustic Pressure Sensing with Hollow-Core Photonic Bandgap Fibers

Abstract

Recently, photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) have attracted many researchers because of their special characteristics, and design flexibility that cannot be realized by conventional fibers. One of the important areas of research is the optical fiber hydrophones. In this paper, the finite element solver COMSOL multiphysics (FES) is used to study and compare the phase sensitivity to acoustic pressure of a hollow-core photonic band gap fiber (HC-PBF), and a conventional single-mode fiber (SMF) for various acoustic pressures in the frequency range from 10 kHz to 50 kHz. Simulation results of the investigated optical fibers show that the normalized responsivity (NR) to acoustic pressure of the investigated HC-PBF, and SMF are-344 dB, and-366 dB, respectively.