Optical fiber accelerometer based on a silicon micromachined cantilever

An intensity-modulated fiber-optic accelerometer based on backreflection effects has been manufactured and tested. It uses a multimode fiber placed at a spherical mirror center, and the beam intensity is modulated by a micromachined silicon cantilever. This device has applications as an accelerometer and vibrometer for rotating machines. It exhibits an amplitude linearity of ±1.2% in the range of 0.1–22 m s−2, a frequency linearity of ±1% in the range of 0–100 Hz, and a temperature sensitivity of less than 0.03%/°C. The sensor is devoted to a wavelength-division multiplexing network.