Temperature, Refractive Index, and Corrosion Simultaneous Monitoring Using Raman Anti-Stokes Reflectometric Optical Fiber Sensor

An optical sensor that can measure multiple parameters is a promising area of research. This can also be attributed to the fact that monitoring two or more measurands at the same time is crucial in embedded systems, especially when they are interconnected, as is the case of temperature and corrosion or temperature and refractive index. In this work, an optical fiber sensor based on Raman scattering in single-mode optical fibers to simultaneously monitor temperature, refractive index, and corrosion is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This sensor consists of a distributed temperature detection system based on Raman scattering with additional sensor heads: for multipoint corrosion monitoring and multipoint refractive index variation measurement. The multiparameter sensor was evaluated for solutions with refractive indices in the range of 1.3370–1.3840 refractive index unit (RIU), for temperatures between 30 °C and 100 °C, and for aluminum thin-film corrosion in acid solution. The experimental results show that the sensor presents sensitivities of 0.5 dB/10–3 RIU to refractive index variations, of 0.43 dB/nm for corrosion, and of 0.243 dB/°C for temperature, with a resolution of 2 °C. The sensor system can also provide the corrosion rate and operate in fiber links several kilometers long.