White light interferometry-a road to low cost, high performance optical fibre sensors?

It is recognised that white light interferometry based on optically fibre linked interferometers provides the basis for high performance sensors. These have the capability to operate under conditions in which other types of optical sensor will fail as a result of environmental and system noise due primarily to fibre perturbation and component drift. The author describes the basic principle of the technique and reviews the major design issues. The scope for the manufacture of low cost high performance system is assessed