We describe the fabrication and performance of a continuously grated twisted multicore fiber sensor array. The grated fiber sensor comprises nearly continuous Bragg gratings along its entire length. The gratings are inscribed over lengths in excess of 10m in fibers with UV transparent coating using a flexible and scalable reel to reel processing system. The arrays are tested using optical frequency domain reflectometry (OFDR). We report on automated analysis routines applied to these OFDR measurements that allow for characterization of 100s of individual grating exposures that make up a continuously grated fiber length. We also report on the spectral loss of the continuously grated fiber, showing that it is suitable for applications with sensors in excess of 100m. Finally, we report on the fiber sensing characteristics by performing measurements of fiber bend using a fiber shape reconstruction algorithm on OFDR traces obtained from four of the fiber cores.
We report on the optical and sensor performance characteristics of meter long continuous twisted multicore optical fiber gratings. We describe a method to analyze the optical performance of all the cores in the multicore array. We also report on the sensitivity of our arrays to local changes such as bend and twist. Our analysis provides guidance for the proper operating range of multicore fiber sensing arrays.
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