This invited talk includes the latest developments on opto-electronic sensor system using specialty optical fibers, mainly the well-known polymer optical fibers (POFs), in their many variants, and novel nanoparticles (NP) doped optical fibers. Both fibers have intrinsic advantages over the standard telecommunication fibers regarding their higher sensitivities, which are presented for both POF and NP-doped fibers in different aspects. For the POFs, there is a higher sensitivity and dynamic range for force and strain sensing, respectively, whereas the NPdoped fibers have higher Rayleigh backscattering signal, which lead to the development of low-cost distributed optical fiber sensors with higher spatial resolution. Thus, the applications of specialty optical fibers in human life are discussed and reviewed.
|