Abstract
Optical sensing technologies are increasingly attractive for applications where susceptibility to electromagnetic interference must be minimized. Optical fibers provide an inexpensive yet effective approach to simultaneously transmit and receive signals with high consistency and minimal attenuation. While prior work in the field considers development of various types of miniaturized sensors that have the size profile of an optical fiber, practical design and implementation of such sensors is challenging to non-specialists. Certain sensor topologies rely on construction of internal gratings in a sensing fiber, while others are based on micromechanical sensor structures that are interrogated with prescribed optical signals. This work presents a case study where a microscopic (fiber-sized) acoustic sensor utilizing optical measurement of a mechanical sensing structure is designed and constructed to dynamically transduce pressures in the acoustic and low ultrasonic frequency ranges (below 100 kHz).
