Dual D-shaped plastic optical fiber for simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature based on specklegram

The refractive index (RI) measurment of the liquid often changes with the sensor's temperature. Accurate RI measurements require simultaneous measurements of the liquid temperature to calibrate the RI measurement. This study proposed what we believe to be a novel dual D-shaped plastic optical fiber sensor capable of simultaneously measuring both RI and temperature. A fluorescent material made of rhodamine B (RhB) is embedded in one of the D-shaped structures of the dual D-shaped fiber, which can be excited by a green laser to produce orange fluorescence. The fluorescence and the input laser of the fiber are superimposed at the output end of the fiber to form a specklegram containing information of two wavelengths. It was found through experiments that the effects of temperature and RI change on the red and green channels of the specklegrams are different, and the neural network can learn this feature to complete the measurement of both RI and temperature parameters. For RI sensing, the maximum error between the average predicted value and the true value of the test set is 0.0005. For temperature sensing, the maximum error between the average predicted value and the true value of the test set is 0.26°C. In addition, because the intensity change of the fluorescence varies linearly with RI and temperature, the sensor also has good stability.