Optical fiber vibration sensor using (Pancharatnam) phase step interferometry

A fiber-optic vibration sensor based on polarization and phase-step interferometry is reported. Left- and right-circularly polarized light coming back from the reference and signal arms of a modified Michelson fiber interferometer is processed with an array of five linear analyzers separated angular steps of /spl pi//4 (rad) from each other. Thus, five interference patterns are acquired simultaneously and the dynamical phase retrieval problem is reduced to five-step interferometry in the time-domain. A vibration sensor as described above was built by the authors and its performance was investigated.