Cascaded-cavity Fabry–Perot interferometer for simultaneous measurement of temperature and strain with cross-sensitivity compensation

Abstract We propose and demonstrate a fiber sensor for simultaneous temperature and strain measurements. The proposed sensor is implemented by a cascaded-cavity Fabry–Perot (FP) fiber interferometer. The two cascaded FP cavities comprise a micro-air-cavity in a hollow-core tube fiber and a micro-silica-cavity in a standard single-mode fiber. To separate the interference spectrum of each FP cavity, the total spectrum is filtered in the frequency domain through band-pass filters, whose central frequencies were predesigned based on the relationship between the spatial frequency and free spectral range of each FP cavity. The different cross-sectional areas and thermal-optic coefficients of the two FP cavities confer different sensitivities to temperature and strain. Both parameters were measured simultaneously by tracking the wavelength shifts in the filtered interference spectra of the FP cavities. Moreover, the temperature–strain cross-sensitivity was compensated by solving a sensitivity-coefficient matrix equation for the two cavities, using the calibrated temperatures and strains. Other advantages of the proposed sensor are simple fabrication and an all-fiber structure. Owing to these properties, the proposed sensor is potentially applicable to real sensing applications.