The Method for Protection of Sensitive Fiber Optic Components from Environmental Noise and Vibration Impacts

Fiber optic components, such as fiber optic interferometers, fiber sensors and fiber lasers have high level of sensitivity to environmental acoustic and vibration noise due to elasto-optical effect and fiber elongation under pressure. For most applications this effect is undesirable and it should be reduced for proper operation of fiber optic system. The proposed method for reducing the fiber components environmental noise sensitivity level is based on the implementation of two-layer protective construction. The experimental test confirmed its effectiveness of undesirable impact suppression at the level from -3.2 to -19 dB relatively to the acoustic sensitivity level of bare optical fiber sample. The effectiveness appeared to be directly proportional to the acoustic pressure level. This fact allows us to implement proposed construction as an acoustic shock absorber or an acoustic filter with external impact level dependent transfert characteristic for sensitive fiber optic components.