ABSTRACT
The past 20 years have witnessed an intense international research effort devoted to the use of optical fiber-based sensors designed to measure a wide range of physical and chemical parameters. More recently, advances in component technologies and the growth of cost-effective processing power have enabled many of these sensing methods to mature from laboratory systems into commercial products. The operational details of many of these sensors can be found elsewhere. This chapter focuses principally on polarimetric measurement techniques, which relate changes induced in the polarization state of light traveling within an optical fiber to measurands of interest.
