Search

This paper describes woven fabrics made from polymer optical fibers (POF), which are treated with a CO2 laser so that the resultant surface notches on the POFs facilitate side emission of light. The transmission and side-emitting behavior of POF with surface notches are studied in term of the variation in bending curvatures, which is related to end-usage of the woven fabrics as flexible displays, wearable phototherapy devices and fashion accessories. The measured power of transmission of light from the POF rapidly decreases with increasing bending curvature. However, the measured power of side-emission of light from the notched POFs remains almost constant at various bending curvatures within the experimental range. Theoretical analysis of the light propagation in a notched POF is conducted, which illustrates that more light is reflected from one side of the notch when the bending curvature is increased hence the transmission of the light is decreased. The theoretical and experimental results reach a good agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The fiber ring resonator (FRR) is the core sensing element in a resonator fiber optic gyroscope (R-FOG), and its sensitivity determines the performance of the R-FOG. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of the sensitivity of the FRR which is made of an air-core photonic-bandgap fiber (PBF), in which the characteristics of the FRR using PBF are compared with that of an FRR using a conventional single mode fiber. When using PBF instead of conventional fiber, it is found that the resonance curve is changed, and the sensitivity of the FRR is decreased a little when a narrow spectral linewidth laser is used. However, the degree of the decrease in sensitivity is not big enough to deny the advantages of PBF in improving the performance of the R-FOG considering that PBF is much better than conventional fiber in reducing the drift. Also, the optimal parameters of the directional coupler for sensitivity are discussed. It is found that the optimal intensity coupling coefficient when using PBF is nearly two times larger than that when using conventional fiber, and the optimal coupler intensity loss when using PBF is smaller than that when using conventional fiber. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]