Invited Paper ICPOF 2010, Yokohama, Japan

DISTRIBUTED POF SENSORS – RECENT PROGRESS AND NEW

CHALLENGES
Katerina Krebber, Philipp Lenke, Sascha Liehr, Marcus Schukar, Mario Wendt, Jens Witt
BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, Berlin, Germany
katerina.krebber@bam.de

Abstract: The potential of the use of POF as distributed sensors in several application fields has been
successfully demonstrated. The distributed POF sensors have moved from the laboratory to the field. The paper
presents the recent progress in the development of distributed POF sensors and addresses the main challenges
to this innovative technology.

1. Introduction
The most important advantage of fibre optic sensors over all other types of sensors is that they can provide
sensing all along the optical fibre. Distributed fibre optic sensors can thus be realized. The ability of distributed
fibre optic sensors to measure various physical parameters at thousands of points along a single optical fibre is a
unique feature of these sensors and is unmatched in conventional sensing techniques. The single distributed fibre
optic sensor can therefore replace the thousands of local point-wise measuring sensors and costs can be
reduced. The distributed sensing technique is particularly attractive for the monitoring of large structures such as
dykes, dams, railways, bridges, tunnels, pipelines, power plants, wind turbines or aircrafts. Distributed fibre optic
sensors are increasingly used in smart-structures applications, as embedded (or attached) sensors for structural
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health monitoring . Such sensors can serve as “smart skins” or “fibre nerves” and can provide a truly distributed
monitoring of the structural health of the structures in real time. For example, distributed fibre optic sensors can
be used as textile-embedded sensors for detecting critical mechanical deformations and soil displacement of
large earth structures, cracks in masonry buildings and heritage structures, leakage and failures of pipelines and
damage in composite structures like wind turbines and aircrafts. Measurements can be obtained over areas of
several hundred meters up to some kilometres and from places that are difficult to access.
The development of low-loss optical fibres for telecommunication purposes and the OTDR (optical time-
domain reflectometry) technique paved the way for the distributed fibre optic sensors. The OTDR can be
considered as the first distributed sensor. Since then the distributed fibre optic sensors have come a long way.
Various physical effects have been utilized to develop continuously distributed fibre optic sensors. Additionally to
OTDR sensors, the most common are the distributed Brillouin and Raman sensing techniques. During the past
decades, mainly Brillouin and Raman fibre optic sensors based on silica fibres have been used for distributed
long-range temperature and strain measurements. Recent developments allow distributed temperature and strain
monitoring over distances of up to 100 km. Several devices based on these techniques are commercially
available on the market. Even if the development of the distributed Brillouin and Raman sensor technologies has
well advanced, their use in the structural health monitoring is limited. For instance, the excellent Brillouin sensor
technique based on silica fibres reaches its limit when strain of more than 1 % occurs. Furthermore, silica fibres
are very fragile, e.g. while being installed on construction sites. As a consequence, special robust and expensive
glass fibre cables have to be used in order to avoid fibre breakage. Therefore, for many monitoring purposes
sensors based on silica fibres cannot be reliably used and sensors based on polymer optical fibres (POF) have
come into focus. Compared to silica-fibre based sensors, POF sensors offer a remarkable ease of handling, low
costs, light weight, high robustness and capability of measuring high strain values of several ten percent. The
plastic nature of POF provides more rugged fibre cables capable of withstanding installation on construction site
without fibre breakage.
During the last decade, the POF technologies have advanced considerably. Polymer materials that exhibit
excellent optical properties are being used to produce POF as an alternative to silica optical fibres. However,
there are still several main limitations of POF like high attenuation and low processing temperatures that limit the
use of the fibres. Recent research has highlighted the potential of the use of POF as distributed sensors for
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structural health monitoring and for further applications . During the last years, distributed POF sensors have
successfully moved from the laboratory to the field. For monitoring of civil infrastructures, the main benefits of
distributed POF sensors have been seen in their robustness, long-term stability and insensitivity to external
perturbations that usually affect conventional (silica-fibre based) sensors. Despite the many advantages of
distributed POF sensors, there is still a gap between existing POF sensor technologies and the requirements of
applications. The paper presents the recent progress in the development of distributed POF sensors for different
applications and addresses the main challenges to POF and POF technologies in order to fully utilize the potential
of these innovative fibre optic sensors.

2. Distributed POF sensors for monitoring of civil infrastructures

Structural health monitoring of civil infrastructures is a challenge. Large geotechnical structures like dykes,
dams, railways, embankments or slopes require on-line and long-term monitoring systems for distributed
measurements of mechanical deformation (strain) over extended areas of several hundred meters or even more.
Invited Paper ICPOF 2010, Yokohama, Japan

Such a monitoring will improve the chance of early detection and location of “weak points” and damages and will
make it possible to rapidly control damages and get better maintenance of the structures. Particularly the
monitoring of geotechnical areas with an expected high mechanical deformation such as endangered slopes for
the prevention of landslide disasters is a very important task in the geotechnical engineering and no reliable
sensor methods exist, so far. Masonry and heritage structures are structurally vulnerable, e.g. in earthquake
regions. Especially heritage structures built many years ago are exposed to environmental influences for a long
time and require a continuous monitoring to prevent a total structural collapse. Distributed POF OTDR sensors
are well suited for such monitoring purposes because they can provide truly distributed information about the
overall structure-behaviour and can overcome limitations of traditional silica-fibre based sensors which are
restricted to very low strain values. In particular, technical textiles with embedded distributed POF sensors have
proven to be an excellent tool for such monitoring tasks since the textiles can additionally be used for
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reinforcement and stabilization of the geotechnical or masonry body . Such textile-integrated distributed POF
sensors can provide information about critical mechanical deformations, soil displacement or the occurrence of
cracks at any position of geotechnical or masonry structures via distributed strain measurement along the fibre
with a high spatial resolution.
The OTDR is the most common distributed sensing technique and uses the Rayleigh scattering in optical
fibres to measure the attenuation and backscatter profiles of the fibres. The detected signal, the Rayleigh
signature of the fibre, contains distance information about the fibre-behaviour. It has been proven that it is
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possible to measure strain in POF using OTDR . The physical effect that is being used is the increase of the
backscattered light at locations where strain is applied to the POF. Using this effect, strain of up to more than
45 % was measured on standard PMMA POF. Today, several POF OTDR devices are commercially available on
the market and allow measurements of strain along standard POF of about 100 m with a spatial resolution of less
than 1 m. The development of distributed POF OTDR sensors for civil engineering structures has considerably
advanced. The distributed POF sensors have been successfully demonstrated in the field as textile-integrated
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sensors for the monitoring of geotechnical and masonry structures . Several field tests in an open brown coal pit
near Belchatow, Poland have been conducted since 2008. Using POF-sensors equipped geotextiles installed at a
creeping slope, clefts in the slope have been detected and the increase of the clefts with time have been recorded
by the distributed POF OTDR sensors in order to predict dangerous slope slides (Fig. 1). Strain of more than
10 % was measured at the locations of the clefts by the POF OTDR sensor. Such high strain values can only be
detected by using POF sensors; silica fibre-based sensors will fail already at a strain of about 1 %. The successful
demonstration of the distributed POF OTDR sensors in the field and the huge interest of the geotechnical industry
in these sensors resulted in the development of the first commercially available product based on distributed POF
sensors – GEDISE: Distributed Sensor Technique in Geotextiles using POF (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Installation of a geogrid containing POF at a creeping slope in a brown coal pit near Belchatow,
Poland and monitoring of clefts in the slope by a distributed POF OTDR sensor (geogrid: Alpe Adria Textile,
Italy; field test: Glötzl GmbH, Germany). The increase of the backscatter signals at 35 m and 30.5 m
corresponds to strains in the POF at the locations of the clefts.

Fig. 2. Leaflet of GEDISE: Distributed Sensor Technique in Geotextiles using POF (developed by Glötzl
GmbH, Germany, Alpe Adria Textile, Italy and BAM, Germany and commercially available by RG Research
and Glötzl GmbH, Germany).
The safety and management of masonry and heritage structures and the prediction of their structural
performance require continuous monitoring and maintenance. Damages affect the current and future
performances of these structures and, therefore, permanent damage detection and localization is necessary in
order to quickly take actions in case of expected structural collapse. Typical structural damages of masonry that
have to be detected are cracks, e.g. due to earthquakes in earthquake regions. Distributed POF OTDR sensors
have proven to be very promising for such monitoring purposes since they not only enable distributed strain
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measurement, they are also appropriate to detect very small cracks of 1-2 mm, as shown in the past . Several
Invited Paper ICPOF 2010, Yokohama, Japan

field tests have successfully been conducted since 2009 on real masonry buildings reinforced by POF-
sensors-based technical textiles, e.g. at the Eucentre in Pavia, Italy (Fig. 3). The testing procedures included
several strong seismic shocks (simulating earthquakes) that resulted in several cracks in the masonry walls. The
occurred cracks were clearly detected and localized by the distributed POF OTDR sensor (Fig. 3) which
demonstrated the potential of this technique to be used for damage detection of masonry and heritage structures.

Fig. 3. Application of technical textiles onto a masonry building at the Eucentre in Pavia, Italy and detection
of cracks in the masonry wall by a textile-embedded distributed POF OTDR sensor after several seismic
shocks were applied to the building (textiles: Selcom, Italy; field test: D’Appolonia S.p.A., Italy). The
increase of the backscatter signal at 37 m, 38 m and 39.5 m corresponds to strains in the POF at the
locations of the cracks.
Although the development of distributed POF OTDR sensors is presently well advanced, there is still a gap
between state-of-the-art and requirements of the applications. The monitoring of large geotechnical and civil
infrastructures require fibre sensor lengths of several hundred meters or even more in order to get information
about the entire structure. Due to the high attenuation of standard PMMA POF, the maximum distance range is
limited to about 100 m. To extend the distance range or to interrogate several POF sensors simultaneously, the
development of multichannel POF OTDR devices and POF multiplexers should be targeted in the future. To
overcome the limitations of standard PMMA POF, the use of low-loss perfluorinated (PF) POF has been
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proposed . PF POF have much lower attenuation than standard PMMA POF and, due to their graded refractive
index, lower modal dispersion than step-index PMMA POF. It has been shown that using PF POF it is possible to
monitor fibre lengths of more than 500 m (Fig. 4, left) with an increased spatial resolution of 10 cm. Recent
research has demonstrated, that PF POF allow the measurement of very high strain values of up to 100 % (Fig. 4,
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right) . During the past decade, there has been a great advance in the development of low-loss PF POF.
However, the use of these fibres as distributed sensors for monitoring for civil infrastructures still suffers from the
lack of robust POF cables giving the best possible protection to the fibres in harsh environments.

Fig. 4. Left: OTDR trace of perfluorinated POF (Chromis GigaPOF). Right: OTDR signal of 1 m fibre section
of perfluorinated POF (Asahi Glass) strained up to 100 %.
Nowadays, the most common fibre sensor techniques for distributed strain and temperature detection are
based on Brillouin and Raman scattering. Since the scattering processes inherently depend on the fibre strain and
temperature, sensor systems based on these effects are naturally devoted to performing strain and temperature
measurements. Even if the development of distributed POF sensors based on OTDR has considerably advanced,
there is low advancement in the investigation of Brillouin and Raman scattering phenomena in POF for sensing
applications. Distributed POF sensors based on these effects are a challenge and are regarded as the next
generation distributed fibre optic sensors.

3. Distributed POF sensors for other applications

In some medical applications, like the monitoring of patients under Medical Resonance Imaging (MRI),
electrical sensors cannot play a role and pure fibre optic sensors are needed because of their electromagnetic
compatibility. The use of fibre optic sensors instead of electrical sensors will reduce the electromagnetic
disturbance of the MRI field and also the burning hazard for the patients caused by the use of electrical sensors
placed on the patients’ skin. For MRI applications there is a special need to monitor the patients’ respiratory
activity. Human breathing movement causes typical elongations of the abdominal circumference of adults of about
3 %. Therefore, with a special focus on using POF instead of silica fibres wearable monitoring solutions with
embedded fibre optic sensors have been developed for the respiratory monitoring of anaesthetized patients under
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MRI . The wearability of such monitoring systems will increase the comfort to the users. A highly important
criterion for selecting POF as medical sensors is also their biocompatibility, especially in case of fibre breakage.
Recent research has demonstrated the suitability of using distributed POF OTDR sensors as textile-embedded
Invited Paper ICPOF 2010, Yokohama, Japan

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sensors for the respiratory movement monitoring (Fig. 5, left) . Using the POF OTDR technique it is possible to
focus on selected parts of the fibre and so to simultaneously measure the abdominal and thoracic respiration
(required by the medical doctors) by using only one monitor and one sensor fibre. Besides, the monitoring unit
can be placed out of the MRI room and can be connected to the sensor by a fibre cable of several ten meters.
Despite the big potential of the POF OTDR technique for such monitoring purposes, the clinical validation and use
of the sensor for healthcare monitoring still lack small, portable and fast POF OTDR devices. The development of
such monitoring units should be targeted in the future.

POF

Fig. 5. Left: Harness containing fibre optic sensors for respiratory monitoring of patients under MRI and the
respiratory abdominal movement of a human adult recorded by POF OTDR and a spirometer. Right:
Composite structure with an embedded 500 µm POF clamped in a load testing machine and stretched up to
the burst (the POF survived beyond the failure strain of the glass-fibres reinforced laminate of 1.6 %).
In order to monitor the structural health of composite structures like aircrafts or wind turbines, fibre optic
sensors have increasingly been used as embedded sensors. Embedded distributed fibre optic sensors could
provide real-time information about the condition of the structures, could measure the strain profile over the entire
structure and detect and localize damages and failures in the structures. The functionality of POF integrated in
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glass-fibres reinforced laminates has been demonstrated, recently . It has been shown that due to the high
ductility of POF, sensors based on these fibres sustain high structural mechanical deformations and can survive
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beyond the failure strain of the laminates providing good signals even after failure of the structure (Fig. 5, right) .
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The development of advanced composite materials with embedded (distributed) POF sensors is in progress .
However, the low processing temperatures and the relative large diameter of common (multi mode) POF limit the
use of this innovative sensor technique for such applications. The technology toward development of small-
diameter (single mode) POF sustaining much higher temperatures should be addressed in the future.

4. Conclusions
Distributed POF sensors have proven to be an efficient and unmatched sensing tool for many applications.
After several years of research, they have successfully migrated from the laboratory to the field and have filled
several application niches in the monitoring of civil infrastructures, composite structures and in medicine. Several
interrogation units are commercially available and can be paired with different types of POF and POF cables to
provide distributed strain and temperature measurements. However, the use of distributed POF sensors in some
applications still suffers from the high attenuation and the low processing temperatures of the fibres as well as
from the lack of suitable optoelectronic devices and adequate sensing cables, adapted to the specific sensing
needs. Therefore, to utilize the full potential of this innovative sensing technology, more research effort should be
devoted to the development of new POF and POF cables as well as of monitoring units in the near future. It is
expected that new distributed POF sensors will appear and the POF sensor technology will become a
“mainstream” sensing technology in several application fields.

Acknowledgement
Research has been carried out in the framework of the European projects POLYTECT (NMP2-CT-2006-026789) and
OFSETH (IST-2005-027869) supported by the European Commission within FP6. The authors gratefully thank for the financial
support and the fruitful cooperation with the project partners.

References
1. K. Krebber et al., ”Distributed fiber optic sensors embedded in technical textiles for structural health monitoring”, Proc. 4th
European Workshop on Optical Fiber Sensors, to be published (2010).
2. K. Krebber et al., “Smart technical textiles with integrated POF sensors”, Proc. SPIE 6933, 69330V-1 – 69330V-15 (2008).
3. S. Liehr et al., “Distributed strain measurement in perfluorinated polymer optical fibres using optical frequency domain
reflectometry”, Meas. Sci. Technol. 21(8) 094023, 6 pp., (2010).
4. J. Witt et al., “Smart medical textiles with embedded optical fibre sensors for continuous monitoring of respiratory
movements during MRI”, Proc. 4th European Workshop on Optical Fiber Sensors, to be published (2010).
5. M. Schukar et al, „Integration Technology of POF Sensors into Composites for Structural health Monitring“, Proc. 18th Int.
Conf. on Plastic Optical Fibres, (2009).
6. R. de Oliveira et al., “Development of adaptive composites with embedded plastic optical fibres, Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. on
Recent Advances in Composite Materials, to be published (2010).
© 2010 ICPOF