The proposed technique demonstrates a fiber ring resonator interrogated by an optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR), for intensity sensing. By using this methodology, a cavity round trip time of 2.85 μs was obtained. For a proof of concept, a long-period grating was inserted in the resonant cavity operating as a curvature sensing device. A novel signal processing approach was outlined, regarding to the logarithmic behavior of the OTDR. Through analyzing the experimental results, an increase in the measured sensitivities was obtained by increasing applied bending. With curvatures performed from 1.8 m–1 to 4.5 m–1, the sensitivity values ranged from 2.94 dB·km–1 to 5.15 dB·km–1. In its turn, the sensitivities obtained presented a linear behavior when studied as a function of the applied curvature, following a slope of 0.86×10–3 dB. The advantages of applying this technique were also discussed, demonstrating two similar fiber rings multiplexed in a series of configurations.

We analyze and explore the potential of using a polymer horizontal slot waveguide as light-analyte interactive region to implement a low-cost and highly sensitive liquid refractive index sensor. Numerical analysis shows that the optimized polymer horizontal slot waveguide is able to realize high waveguide sensitivity. With the optimized horizontal slot waveguide, polymer liquid refractive index sensors based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) and microring resonator (MRR) are then investigated numerically, and the results show that the MZI-based sensor can achieve high sensitivity of 17024 nm/RIU and low limit of detection (LOD) of 1.76×10-6 RIU while the MRR-based sensor can achieve the sensitivity of 177 nm/RIU and the LOD of 1.69×10-4 RIU with a very small footprint. Compared with the sensors employing conventional silicon or silicon nitride vertical slot waveguide, the sensors employing polymer horizontal slot waveguide exhibit comparable performances but simpler and lower fabrication costs.

A new radiation-hard germano-silicate glass optical fiber with a pure silica glass buffer and a boron-doped silica glass inner cladding was fabricated for temperature sensor application based on the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) under --ray irradiation environment. The temperature dependences of optical attenuation at 1550.5 nm and Bragg reflection wavelength shift from 18 ℃ to 40 ℃ before the γ-ray irradiation were about 4.57×10–4 dB/ ℃ and 5.48 pm/ ℃ , respectively. The radiation-induced optical attenuation at 1550.5 nm and the radiation-induced Bragg reflection wavelength shift under the γ-ray irradiation with the total dose of 22.85 kGy at 35 ℃ were about 0.03 dB/m and 0.12 nm, respectively, with the γ-ray irradiation sensitivity of 5.25×10–3 pm/Gy. The temperature and the γ-ray irradiation dependence of optical attenuation at 1550.5 nm in the FBG written fiber with boron-doped silica glass inner cladding were about 6 times and 4 times lower than that in the FBG written fiber without boron-doped silica glass inner cladding under a temperature change from 18 ℃ to 40 ℃ and the γ-ray irradiation with the total dose of 22.85 kGy at 35 ℃, respectively. Furthermore, the effect of temperature increase on the Bragg reflection wavelength of the FBG written fiber with boron-doped silica inner cladding was much larger about 1000 times than that of the γ-ray irradiation. However, no influence on the reflection power of the Bragg wavelengths and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) bandwidth under temperature and the γ-ray irradiation change was found. Also, after the γ-ray irradiation with the dose of 22.85 kGy, no significant change in the refractive index was found but the residual stresses developed in the fiber were slightly relaxed or retained.

Gafchromic external beam therapy 3 (EBT3) film has widely been used in medical field applications. Principally, the EBT3 film’s color gradually changes from light green to darker color under incremental exposures by ionizing or even non-ionizing ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Peak absorbance of the EBT3 film can be used to predict absorbed doses by the film. However, until today, related researches still rely on spectrometers for color analysis of EBT3 films. Hence, this paper presents a comparative analysis between results produced by the spectrometer and a much simpler light-emitting diode-photodiode based system in profiling the color changes of EBT3 films after exposure by solar UV radiation. This work has been conducted on a set of 50 EBT3 samples with incremental solar UV exposure (doses). The wavelength in the red region has the best sensitivity in profiling the color changes of EBT3 films for low solar UV exposure measurement. This study foresees the ability of blue wavelength to profile films with a large range of solar UV exposure. The LED (light emitting diode)-based optical system has produced comparable measurement accuracies to the spectrometer and thus, with a potential for replacing the need for a multipurpose spectroscopy system for simple measurement of light attenuation.

Automatic detection of a designated building area (DBA) is a research hotspot in the field of target detection using remote sensing images. Target detection is urgently needed for tasks such as illegal building monitoring, dynamic land use monitoring, antiterrorism efforts, and military reconnaissance. The existing detection methods generally have low efficiency and poor detection accuracy due to the large size and complexity of remote sensing scenes. To address the problems of the current detection methods, this paper presents a DBA detection method that uses hierarchical structural constraints in remote sensing images. Our method was conducted in two main stages. (1) During keypoint generation, we proposed a screening method based on structural pattern descriptors. The local pattern feature of the initial keypoints was described by a multilevel local pattern histogram (MLPH) feature; then, we used one-class support vector machine (OC-SVM) merely to screen those building attribute keypoints. (2) To match the screened keypoints, we proposed a reliable DBA detection method based on matching the local structural similarities of the screened keypoints. We achieved precise keypoint matching by calculating the similarities of the local skeletal structures in the neighboring areas around the roughly matched keypoints to achieve DBA detection. We tested the proposed method on building area sets of different types and at different time phases. The experimental results show that the proposed method is both highly accurate and computationally efficient.

Exploring and understanding the ocean is an important field of scientific study. Acquiring accurate and high-resolution temperature and depth profiles of the oceans over relatively short periods of time is an important basis for understanding ocean currents and other associated physical parameters. Traditional measuring instruments based on piezoelectric ceramics have a low spatial resolution and are not inherently waterproof. Meanwhile, sensing systems based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) have the advantage of facilitating continuous measurements and allow multi-sensor distributed measurements. Therefore, in this paper, an all-fiber seawater temperature and depth-sensing array is used to obtain seawater temperature and depth profiles. In addition, by studying the encapsulation structure of the FBG sensors, this paper also solves the problem of the measurement error present in traditional FBG sensors when measuring seawater temperature. Through a theoretical analysis and seaborne test in the Yellow Sea of China, the sampling frequency of the all-fiber seawater temperature and depth profile measurement system is 1 Hz, the accuracy of the FBG sensors reaches 0.01 ℃, and the accuracy of the FBG depth sensors reaches 0.1 % of the full scale. The resulting parameters for these sensors are therefore considered to be acceptable for most survey requirements in physical oceanography.

This paper provides a simple hybrid design and numerical analysis of the graphene-coated fiber-optic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor for breast cancer gene-1 early onset (BRCA1) and breast cancer gene-2 early onset (BRCA2) genetic breast cancer detection. Two specific mutations named 916delTT and 6174delT in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 are selected for numerical detection of breast cancer. This sensor is based on the technique of the attenuated total reflection (ATR) method to detect deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) hybridization along with individual point mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. We have numerically shown that momentous changes present in the SPR angle (minimum: 135 % more) and surface resonance frequency (SRF) (minimum: 136 % more) for probe DNA with various concentrations of target DNA corresponding to a mutation of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. The variation of the SPR angle and SRF for mismatched DNA strands is quite negligible, whereas that for complementary DNA strands is considerable, which is essential for proper detection of genetic biomarkers (916delTT and 6174delT) for early breast cancer. At last, the effect of electric field distribution in inserting graphene layer is analyzed incorporating the finite difference time domain (FDTD) technique by using Lumerical FDTD solution commercial software. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of such a highly efficient biosensor for detecting BRCA1 and BRCA2 breast cancer. Therefore, the proposed biosensor opens a new window toward the detection of breast cancers.

Sampled fiber grating is a special superstructure fiber Bragg grating with a wide range of applications in many fields. In this work, based on drawing tower in-line fabrication system, a new preparation method of the sampled fiber grating is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Experimental result shows that the obtained sampled fiber gratings possess dense reflection spectra, with a minimum reflection peak interval of only 0.09 nm. This method exhibits promising application prospect in the fabrication of the high-quality sampled fiber grating. On the other hand, the spectral characteristics of the sampled fiber grating are analyzed when the sub-grating is affected by the external physical quantities such as, in this paper, strain. Wavelength shift and intensity change in the reflection peak of the spectra indicate that the grating is affected differently by micro strains, due to the different spatial positions along the axis of the sampled fiber grating. This work is aimed at exploring the potential applications of the sampled fiber grating in quasi-distributed micro-area sensing with the millimeter level.

Low energy impact can induce invisible damage of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP). The damage can seriously affect the safety of the CFRP structure. Therefore, damage detection is crucial to the CFRP structure. Impact location information is the premise of damage detection. Hence, impact localization is the primary issue. In this paper, an impact localization system, based on the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor network, is proposed for impact detection and localization. For the completed impact signal, the FBG sensor and narrow-band laser demodulation technology are applied. Wavelet packet decomposition is introduced to extract available frequency band signals and attenuate noise. According to the energy of the available frequency band signal, an impact localization model, based on the extreme learning machine (ELM), is established with the faster training speed and less parameters. The above system is verified on the 500 mm × 500 mm × 2 mm CFRP plate. The maximum localization error and the minimum localization error are 30.4 mm and 6.7 mm, respectively. The average localization error is 14.7 mm, and training time is 0.7 s. Compared with the other machine learning methods, the localization system, proposed in this paper, has higher accuracy and faster training speed. This paper provides a practical system for impact localization of the CFRP structure.