Yundong Zhang

By Yundong Zhang, Huaiyin Su, Kai Ma, Fuxing Zhu, Ying Guo and Weiguo Jiang

As an important parameter in industry, agriculture, biomedical, and aerospace, temperature possesses a significant position for the development of our society. Thus, it has become a hot point to develop novel sensors for temperature monitoring. Compared with traditional electronic sensors, optical fiber sensors break out for the compact structure, corrosion resistance, multiplex and remote sensing capability, cheap prices, and large transmission capacity. Especially the phase modulation type optical fiber sensors attract much attention for the fast and accurate measurement of the external parameters in a large dynamic measurement range. In this work, we review the optical fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) for temperature sensing which is widely used these years. The fundamental principles of MZI fiber sensors are proposed and discussed to further understand MZI. Different kind of structures for temperature sensing of recent years are summarized as several typical MZI categories and their advantages and disadvantages are indicated separately. Finally, we make a conclusion of the MZI temperature sensing and several methods typically to realize the MZI in practical application for the readers.

Part of the book: Temperature Sensing