High spatial resolution distributed optical fiber magnetic field sensor based on magnetostriction by optical frequency-domain reflectometry

The distributed optical fiber magnetic field sensors have a capability of spatially resolving the magnetic field along the entire sensing fiber that is distinguishes from other sensing methods. We present a distributed optical fiber magnetic field sensor based on magnetostriction using Rayleigh backscattering spectra shift in OFDR (optical frequency-domain reflectometry). As the spectral shift of Rayleigh backscattering can be used to achieve a distributed strain measurements with high sensitivity and high spatial resolution using OFDR. In the proposed sensor, the magnetostrictive Fe-Co-V alloy thin films as sensing materials are attached to a 51 m standard single mode fiber (SMF). We detect the strain coupled to SMF caused by variation of magnetic field by measuring Rayleigh Backscattering spectra shift in OFDR. In our experiment, we measure the range of the magnetic field is from 12.9 mT~143.3 mT using proposed method. The minimal measurable magnetic field variation is 12.9 mT when the spatial resolution is 4 cm. The minimal measurable magnetic field variation can be improved to 5.3 mT by increasing the spatial resolution to 14 cm. Moreover, we present the simulation result of two dimension (2D) distribution for the static magnetic field using the Maxwell software program.