Optical humidity sensor based on air guided photonic crystal fiber

We proposed a novel relative humidity (RH) sensor based on the air guided photonic crystal fiber (AGPCF) using the direct absorption spectroscopic method in this paper. The wavelength scanning around the water vapor absorption peak around 1368.59 nm was realized by injecting the saw-tooth modulated current to a distributed-feedback laser diode. A reference signal was used as a zero absorption baseline and to help reduce the interference from the distributed-feedback laser source and probed region. The humidity level was determined by the normalized voltage difference between the reference signal and sensor signal at the peak of water vapor absorption. We demonstrated that a length of 5-cm AGPCF with a fixed small air gap between the single mode fiber (SMF) and hollow core fiber as an opening achieved a humidity detection resolution of around 0.2% RH over the range 0 to 90% RH which did not require the use of any hygroscopic coating material.