AN OVERVIEW OF FIBEROPTIC SENSORS

Fiber-optic sensor technology has experienced tremendous growth since its early beginnings in the 1970s with early laboratory demonstrations of fiber-optic gyros and acoustic sensors and the introduction of the first commercial intensity and spectrally based sensors. These early efforts were followed by a tremendous growth of interest in the 1980s when the number of workers in the field increased from perhaps a few h undred to thousands. The result was the introduction in the 1990s of t he first mass produced fiber-optic sensors that are being used to supp ort navigation and medical applications. The number of fiber-optic sen sors products can be expected to grow tremendously in the years to com e as rapid progress continues to be made in the related optoelectronic and communication fields. This paper provides an overview of some of the technologies being used to support fiber-optic sensor development and how they are being applied. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics .