Simple design of optical fiber displacement sensor using a multimode fiber coupler

A simple design sensor is demonstrated using a fabricated multimode plastic fiber coupler in con-junction with reflective intensity modulation technique. The performances of this sensor are investigated for different light sources. This sensor uses only one fiber for sending and receiving the light and therefore only the back slope exists. The sensor shows the highest performance with the use of yellow light source, which has the highest intensity and the smallest beam divergence. The sensitivity, linear range, resolution and dynamic range of the sensor are obtained at 0.0001 mV/μm, 1500 μm, 70 μm, and 5.0 mm, respectively. The simplicity of the design, high degree of sensitivity, dynamic range and the low cost of the fabrication make it suitable for real field applications.