Advantages Fibre Optic Sensors
Fibre optical sensors offer several significant advantages over conventional electrical sensors. The most important advantages are:
- They're rugged passive components with a long life time (20 years)
- They form an intrinsic part of the fibre optic cable that can transmit the measurement signal over several tens of kilometers
- They show no interference with electromagnetic radiation, so they can function in many hostile environments where conventional sensors would fail
- They don't make use of electrical signals which makes them explosion safe.
- There is a possibility to multiplex many sensors in one optical fibre, driving down the cost of complex sensor networks.
Technologies
FOS&S technologies are all based on fibre optical sensing and can be divided into two main categories: