Rigorous Performance Analysis of Perturbed Taper Optical fiber Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor

Theoretical investigation of optical fiber having sine, raised sine, hyperbolic tangent and gaussian taper profile-based surface plasmon resonance sensor is presented. The reflectivity is calculated by transfer matrix method at left quarter, central and the right quarter taper positions for each taper profile. The sensor performance parameter sensitivity, full width half maximum, amplitude dip, signal to noise ratio and figure of merit are systematically analysed and compared for each taper profile. The sine taper profile attained maximum sensitivity 16.9 μm/RIU with 2.47 signal to noise ratio at the middle of the taper section. The optimal sensor performance is also achieved for sine taper profile with FOM values of 37.2 (1/RIU) at 0.3 taper ratio. At the last, it is concluded that geometrical perturbations significantly modify the field confinement at each taper position and enhanced figure of merit compared to conventional optical fiber.