Optical frequency domain reflectometer distributed sensing using microstructured pure silica optical fibers under radiations

We investigated the capability of micro-structured optical fibers to develop multi-functional, remotely-controlled, Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR) distributed fiber based sensors to monitor temperature in nuclear power plants or high energy physics facilities. As pure-silica-core fibers are amongst the most radiation resistant waveguides, we characterized the response of two fibers with the same microstructure, one possessing a core elaborated with F300 Heraeus rod representing the state-of-the art for such fiber technology and one innovative sample based on pure sol-gel silica. Our measurements reveal that the X-ray radiations do not affect the capacity of the OFDR sensing using these fibers to monitor the temperature up to 1 MGy dose whereas the sensing distance remains affected by RIA phenomena.