A Linear Birefringence Measurement Method for an Optical Fiber Current Sensor

In this work, a linear birefringence measurement method is proposed for an optical fiber current sensor (OFCS). First, the optical configuration of the measurement system is presented. Then, the elimination method of the effect of the azimuth angles between the sensing fiber and the two polarizers is demonstrated. Moreover, the relationship of the linear birefringence, the Faraday rotation angle and the final output is determined. On these bases, the multi-valued problem on the linear birefringence is simulated and its solution is illustrated when the linear birefringence is unknown. Finally, the experiments are conducted to prove the feasibility of the proposed method. When the numbers of turns of the sensing fiber in the OFCS are about 15, 19, 23, 27, 31, 35, and 39, the measured linear birefringence obtained by the proposed method are about 1.3577, 1.8425, 2.0983, 2.5914, 2.7891, 3.2003 and 3.5198 rad. Two typical methods provide the references for the proposed method. The proposed method is proven to be suitable for the linear birefringence measurement in the full range without the limitation that the linear birefringence must be smaller than π/2.