Specialty Optical Fibers for Advanced Sensing Applications

Optical fiber technology has significantly bolstered the growth of photonic applications in numerous areas such as the telecom infrastructure, a wide range of sensors, vehicle and airplane control, life sciences research, and biomedical diagnosis, therapy, monitoring, and imaging. This tutorial gives an overview of recent developments in diverse configurations of specialty optical fibers and their sensing applications. First the fundamental principles for light guiding in conventional solid-core fibers are presented in order to show how optical fibers function in general. Next, using this background material, various specialty optical fibers with expanded optical, electrical, acoustic, or optoelectronic functionalities are reviewed based on innovations in their unique structures, the use of special combinations of materials, and implementations of light-manipulation technologies. Then an overview of sensing applications in various fields is presented.