Elimination of birefringence induced scale factor errors in the in-line Sagnac interferometer current sensor

Author

Short, Shayne X. ; De Arruda, Josiel U. ; Tselikov, Alexandr A. ; Blake, James N.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX, USA

Volume

16

Issue

10

fYear

1998

fDate

10/1/1998 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1844

Lastpage

1850

Abstract

This paper presents theoretical and experimental results showing the effects of linear and circular birefringence on the sensing coil of an in-line Sagnac interferometer current sensor. Linear birefringence induces local scale factor variations along the length of the sensing coil which can be suppressed with circular birefringence. We show that by winding the sensing coil with tension in a helix configuration, these variations may be effectively reduced to zero for ordinary single mode fiber. In our opinion, this method of implementation overcomes the need to use annealed fiber in the sensing coil

Keywords

birefringence; electric current measurement; fibre optic sensors; light interferometers; measurement errors; sensitivity; birefringence induced scale factor errors; circular birefringence; fibre optic sensors; helix configuration; in-line Sagnac interferometer current sensor; local scale factor variations; ordinary single mode fiber; sensing coil; Annealing; Birefringence; Coils; Magnetic sensors; Optical fiber devices; Optical fiber polarization; Optical fiber sensors; Optical interferometry; Optical sensors; Sagnac interferometers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/50.721071

Filename

721071