Comparative study of geometry effect for magnetic field sensor based on multi-mode optical fiber

Experimentally and numerically, measurements have been presented for new type of magnetic field sensor based on combining multimode optical fiber and magnetic ferrofluid. The ferrofluid was filled in a capillary tube around a 15 mm uncladded region of optical fiber. Three uncladded geometries cylindrical, D-shaped and 2D-shaped, have been investigated to study the effect of geometry on sensing performance. Results illustrate that the geometry of the optical fiber has a significant impact on the evanescent waves which propagate from the sensing region into the ferrofluid tube. The obtained results expressed that among all studied cases, the D-shaped configuration has the best performance designing an optical fiber-based magnetic field sensor, since the best measured sensor features such as linearity, sensitivity, response time and recovery time for this case are R2 = 0.9865, 0.01795 μW/mT, 3.15 s and 0.26 s, respectively.